Elisabetta Crovara

Biography

Elisabetta is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She holds a double degree (MA, MSc) in Global Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Fudan University. Elisabetta's PhD project is part of an ARC Future Fellowship grant investigating how the rise of digital technologies is transforming Australian cities. Elisabetta’s research explores how coworking spaces and remote work are changing people’s mobilities, everyday habits, and relationships in regional Victoria.

Coworking spaces are shared working environments where remote workers gather to work and interact. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when we are witnessing more people working remotely, the desegregation of the traditional office, and an increasing residential mobility from cities to regions, coworking spaces in regional areas have the potential of playing a key role as places of work and community. To understand this potential, her thesis proposes a cultural geographical re-imagination of the social and spatial dimensions of regional coworking, through a mobility and place-based lens. By ethnographically tracing people's experiences of residential mobility, everyday commutes, and remote coworking practices, Elisabetta's research shows how people’s everyday life in regional areas is increasingly connected to urban centres, thus proposing a conception of both “the city” and “the region” as non-bounded and relational spaces. Ultimately, her research aims to critically reflect on geographical questions of mobility justice and ethical responsibility of workplace care, in these changing times of COVID-19.

Publications

School of Geography, University of Melbourne, (2020, July 14). New Geographies of Covid-19. Pursuit.