The DSSTTA department, together with the DSU, has established a thematic working group on Internal Areas. According to a process-based definition, internal areas are a result—that is, they come into being as a consequence of processes of peripheralization and marginalization of a territory. It is therefore necessary to reconstruct the complex geography of these territories, their environmental settings, and their social contexts.

In accordance with the principle of symmetry, the environmental and social sciences are called upon to step outside their comfort zones by integrating research methods from the environmental and ecological sciences with those from the humanities and social sciences, within an interdepartmental framework.

A socio-ecological approach seems particularly well-suited to highlighting the ecological, environmental, cultural, and subsistence functions that peripheral and marginalized areas perform (or have the potential to perform) within the territorial system, in order to contribute to the recognition of their role in the territorial system and to support processes aimed at enhancing the territorial capital—natural, cultural, social, and so on—of these areas. From this perspective, exploring the issue of ecological transition linked to a just transition to reduce inequality.