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is a distinguished academic and sociologist with a specialization in migration and visual sociology, currently serving as a professor at Genoa University. Prof. Palmas co-directs Mondi Migranti, a preeminent journal dedicated to the study and research of international migration. Over the last decade, he has directed several European projects on migration, gangs, and youth cultures. Prof. Palmas is the Principal Investigator of the ERC AdG SOLROUTES project, which focuses on solidarities and migrants' routes across Europe.

Prof. Palmas' research has been widely recognized and lauded for its focus on the overlapping forms and dynamics of migrations, youth, and borders. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative research, integrating visual and filmic sociology as a unique methodological tool for conveying research findings.

As the founder and member of the Visual Sociology Research Group (LSV) at the University of Genoa, Prof. Palmas has produced numerous sociological films, podcast series, and art exhibitions on migration, and co-organized international conferences. He has set up a new research series on filmic sociology (Immagin-Azioni Sociali) at Genoa University Press and published the first anthology on filmic and visual sociology in Europe (Sociologie visuelle et filmique, 2018, GUP). Most of his work is based on collaborative research involving generative and narrative workshops. He works often with illegalized actors, requiring a dedicated and continuous process of ethical assessment.

These research and methodological experiences are at the forefront of the SOLROUTES project, even if at a broader scale.

Prof. Palmas has also applied collaborative methodologies in doing ethnography with solidarity activists, migrants, and refugees in informal camps and the transformations of the internal and external European borders in different sites such as Calais, Paris, Ventimiglia, Oulx, Lampedusa, Ceuta, Melilla, Athens and Patras. This led to a co-authored monograph with Federico Rahola, Underground Europe: Along Migrant Routes, Palgrave 2022, which has won the 2023 RC31 Committee of the International Sociological Association award for the best book in Migration Studies.

From 2016 until 2021, Prof. Palmas served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of TRANSGANG “Transnational Gangs as Agents of Mediation,” an ERC-Advanced-funded project where he supervised and coordinated young researchers involved in local fieldwork in Europe such as Marseille, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan.

Prof. Palmas' expertise and contributions have been recognized worldwide, having served as a visiting professor at prestigious universities in the USA, France, Tunisia, Spain, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Brazil. He has delivered keynote lectures in twenty-one countries across three continents, and his work has been translated into five languages.