Place

Antica mulattiera — historic pilgrimage path to the Sacra di San Michele, Val di Susa, Italy. Photograph by Michelle Boyle.

Places hold memory. In their stones, waters, pathways, and layers of human habitation, landscapes carry traces of lives and relationships extending across centuries and millennia.

My research explores the cultural, ecological, and spiritual dimensions of place, particularly in northern Italy, where I spent nine and a half months conducting archival and field research as a visiting researcher at the University of Torino.

From prehistoric ritual sites to medieval pilgrimage routes, sacred springs, churches, and mountain valleys, I am interested in how landscapes accumulate meaning—and how older relationships with land persist, transform, or reemerge beneath contemporary life.

My ongoing work in the valleys of the Po River tributaries investigates the interweaving of ancestral memory, women's histories, ecological consciousness, and sacred geography.

This space will gradually become a collection of field notes, photographs, and reflections from places that have shaped my research and practice.