DIST is a composite department. It is made up of researchers from both the University of Turin and the Politecnico di Torino, whose research activity is an expression of different thematic and disciplinary fields shaped by the encounter of technical knowledge, social sciences and humanities. DIST's research is an expression of the multidisciplinary ethos that characterises its composition; it is located within the different cultures that defines its profile and prefigures the possibility of dialogue between various approaches through the recognition and enhancement of epistemological and methodological differences.
The multi and inter-disciplinary experimentation and hybridisation is one of the distinctive features of the research carried out at DIST, which finds its expression in its current Strategic Plan as well as in the Excellence Project (2018-2022) and in the reference to the principles of inclusion, resilience and sustainability contained in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 11.
Moreover, this attitude shapes the relevance of the Department's research and its ability to renew itself in order to confront the present’s challenges - particularly in a phase of accelerated change and uncertainty as the current one - in which the response of a public institution to collective issues, such as socio-spatial inequalities or the planetary dimension of the urban phenomenon, is measured.
The thematic and problematic articulation of DIST's research concerns three macro-questions - Urbanisation, Heritage and Climate Change- and consists of mono- and inter-disciplinary research that investigate the interactions, both theoretical and practical, between urban issues, cultural heritage, landscape, environment, climate change and the experimentation of strategies and policies to adapt to its effects. Furthermore, the Department’s research relies heavily on its relationship with the DIST research infrastructure, made up by its laboratories.