On May 13, 2024, Acampada 24 began in the Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge gardens at the University of Pisa. Students, who have been mobilizing for months in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to demand a strong stance from the University against the policies and actions of the State of Israel, have set up tents.

This encampment is part of broader national and international demonstrations that, in recent weeks, have seen university students mobilize in many cities worldwide. Additionally, it aims to promote a new and different way of understanding the University as a space where attitudes and methods of coexistence, education, and social awareness can be renewed.

We recognize this form of protest as a historically significant moment for the University of Pisa and its community, the city of Pisa that hosts it, and student movements in general.

We believe it is important to document its development and memory archaeologically, focusing not only on the materiality it is producing and will leave behind; the archaeological perspective can offer a different interpretation and narrative of objects, spaces, temporalities, and relationships.

We hope to create a collective documentation of the Pisa encampment’s material traces and construct, together with the students experiencing it, a collective narrative of this experience. This will help raise awareness within the university community in all its components and the community outside the University.