Travel award report – Research on observational ethnography in a match of the Italian Serie A
Since 2023, the St Leonard’s College Postgraduate Travel Awards scheme supports postgraduate students with any travel that would benefit their research and development. In 2025, it allowed Hijab Shah, PhD student at the School of International Relations, to conduct research in Milan, Italy. Here is the full report:
My research trip to Milan, from 15-19 May 2025, consisted of three interviews and an observational ethnography of fans attending one of the final matches of the 2024/2025 season of the Italian Serie A: Inter Milan vs Lazio.
The interviews and ethnography proved to be incredibly informative in helping understand the importance of football to the citizens of Milan, and how the city’s unique culture and that of Inter Milan have mutually reinforced each other. In particular, the citizens’ self-perception as a “melting pot” city (a theme that repeated in my interviews), seemed to reflect in its football culture, which was a surprising contradiction to my expectations, and will help in the analysis on the counter-radicalisation side of the research.
I went in with perceptions of Milan’s Ultra culture — particularly politically affiliated Ultra groups such as the Irriducibili — as being fairly aggressive, exclusive, and polarised to the point of contributing towards far-right radicalisation. I was, however, (pleasantly) surprised at how friendly and inclusive the pre-match atmosphere was amongst the Inter Milan fans, particulaly towards me as a very visible woman of colour. I casually interacted with several Inter Milan Ultras who were not even Italian: a young French man, a middle-aged Polish father and his young son, a group of Turkish boys, and an older German man were amongst the fans outside the stadium before the match. I also interviewed a middle-aged Black British man who had lived in Milan for over a decade and had close ties to the Ultras.
This fieldwork trip to Milan, being the first one I have conducted outside of the UK, has helped me set a bar for how I would like proceed with further research trips in the future as well.