Marie Curie Fellows - 2020 Call

TIDES - A Long Way to a New Cosmology: Theories of Tides in Pre-Modern Thought

This project aims to offer the first interdisciplinary study of pre-modern engagement with the relatively neglected yet highly problematic and significant natural phenomenon of tides. It argues that the flow and ebb effect was an essential component of cosmological discussions in pre-modern Europe and attracted the attention of all key scholars whom we currently associate with the so-called Scientific Revolution. Against the standard narrative of paradigmatic shifts owing its success to Thomas Kuhn, and following the most recent research in the field, the project thus demonstrates that the epistemological transformations cosmology underwent from the late Middle Ages to the late seventeenth century were more complex and ambiguous than is hitherto believed.

IMUCCA - Interdisciplinary Model for Understanding Climate Change Adaptation

This project is guided by a hypothesis: economic and social relations (class, gender, ethnicity, religion, caste) have an overwhelming impact on CC vulnerability and adaptation practices. Examining one of the regions where the impact of CC is most advanced – rural India – the project aims to generate detailed empirical data for tracing the connections between CC and existing forms of social stratification. Under the supervision of Prof. Monica Billio at the Department of Economics of Ca' Foscari, the project result will be turned into a generalisable model that can be used to understand and predict other agrarian societies’ experiences of CC, and their differential modes of adaptation. Drawing on economic sociology, socioecology and environmental economics, the project's empirical research will take place in two villages in Maharashtra, India, where agriculture is in the midst of an ongoing crisis caused by biophysical processes. 

POLiN - The POlitical conditions of Interoperability in European digital health policies

The POLiN project aims to explore the political condition of interoperability in European Union digital health policies. Interoperability standards are key to efficient digital health infrastructures, in particular for European initiatives such as the creation of a 'European Health Data Space'. While standards selection in digital health is guided by many different industrial, medical, political, legal, and ethical considerations, little is known about the political conditions under which various actors pursuing complex agendas may be willing to adopt common digital standards.Therefore, the aim of this project is to explore the political conditions favoring or impeding the adoption of interoperability standards in EU digital health. Chloé Berut will work at the Department of Linguistic and Comparative Cultural Studies of Ca' Foscari, under the supervision of Prof. Stéphanie Novak.

TESCCO - Teaching science in the Colonial Era: knowledge weaponization and cultural integration from Europe to the Jesuit missions

COMAL - Cuisine(s) of the Ancient Maya across the Lowlands: Reconstructing Plant Diets through Innovative Molecular and Imaging Approaches

COMAL aims at using novel analytical techniques never applied before on archaeological materials from Central America to bring to light which plants were consumed and the different ways in which these were processed by the ancient Maya that inhabited the tropical forests of the Maya Lowlands in what is now Mexico and Guatemala.  Clarissa Cagnato will carry out her research at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics with Prof. Antonio Marcomini, and with a secondment at the Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste. COMAL will expand our knowledge on ancient dietary practices and will impact Maya people (direct descendants of the ancient Maya whose culture was impacted by the Spanish conquest in the 16th century) by shedding new light on their food heritage and the sustainability of their traditions.

GEODETIC – Geography and Cartography in Dante’s Comedy

GEODETIC aims to explore a scantily studied and undervalued aspect of Dante’s poem: the geography of our world. Alongside its imaginary afterlife sceneries, the Comedy shows 14th-century Italian and European geographies, most of which are still recognizable today. Dante outlines an unprecedented, detailed, and precise image of the world, but above all he reveals profound geographical awareness. This project proposes an updated analysis, integrating a philological approach with the territorial data through a specifically interdisciplinary methodology. After a complete examination of geographical areas described in the Comedy, a focus on selected places will allow the geo-historical reconstruction of the physical territories mentioned by the poet through relevant geographic, historiographic, literary, iconographic, and cartographic sources. The evaluation of Dante’s geographical knowledge in its own environmental framework will open up an innovative perspective on his geo-poetics as an essential constituent of the poem. Corazza will spend the first two years between Notre Dame University (USA) and the Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World at the University of Padua, then the third year at the Department of Humanities of Ca’ Foscari University under the supervision of Prof. Tiziano Zanato.

LabEcoInt - Labour & Ecology in an International Perspective: Porto Marghera in the Phosphates Archipelago

This research, hosted by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in partnership with the Geneva Graduate Institute, investigates the making and unmaking of Europe’s historical industrial areas uncovering the intersections between labour and ecological transformations from an international perspective. It does so by deploying theories of extractivism to the case study of the major industrial cluster of Porto Marghera (Venice, Italy), using the production of phosphate-based fertilisers as an entry point. While deindustrial studies focus on the history of industrial areas from a local or national perspective, less attention has been paid to the insertion of such industries in global hierarchies of labour and environmental degradation. By analysing Porto Marghera’s place in the Phosphate Archipelago, this research generates insights for today’s ecological transitions in mining, industry, and agriculture, at a time when fertilisers are once again in the spotlight due to concerns over sustainability and instability in food supply chains. At Ca’ Foscari, Lorenzo Feltrin will be supervised by Prof. Francesco Vacchiano at the Department of Humanities.

NATOEUINNOCLIMAX – NATO-EU strategies on dual use technologies in the energy-resources-climate security nexus to fight Russian hybrid warfare

This research project seeks to explore possible common NATO and EU strategies to fight Russian hybrid warfare, in the crucial areas of energy-resources-climate security nexus, taking into account the role of dual use Emerging Disruptive Technologies (EDTs).  The project will focus on the development of strategic thinking in NATO and EU political-military institutions, to evaluate the gap between the strategic competition needs and the energy-resources-climate security policy results. Russian invasion of Ukraine was a game changer as a new type of hybrid warfare, with the Russian “weaponization” of new security realms, in particular the energy-resources areas of competition transformed in “energy-resources warfare”. At the same time two global trends are impacting the current strategic competition between Europe and Russia in these areas: climate change and technological revolution. The Universities involved in the project will be University of Venice Ca’ Foscari and Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University in Washington DC, USA, with a secondment in Brussels (at VUB University and German Marshall Fund).

SEA-LIMITHS - Sea Level Rise Impacts on Italian Hospitality

Climate change is causing sandy beach erosion and loss, which significantly impacts society and the hospitality industry. Although sandy beaches are crucial for the hospitality sector in most Italian beach destinations, policymakers often overlook detailed risk assessments concerning beach loss from climate change. This study examines the consequences and financial repercussions of sea level rise on sandy beaches, as well as the losses in the beach hospitality industry due to erosion and flooding in two important coastal regions of Italy - Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. By employing machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, we analyze user-generated data in combination with land use maps to assess the economic losses in various hospitality sectors (accommodation, food and drink, sports and leisure) from 2050 to 2100, using different climate change scenarios. Vilane Gonçalves Sales will work  at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics under the supervision of prof. Francesco Bosello.

TRANSMAR - Angelo Clareno as a Marginal Translator of the Greek Fathers: Circulation of Texts and People in Europe before Humanism

The project aims to challenge the widespread prejudice of the medieval ignorance of Greek. It focuses on the emblematic figure of the dissident Franciscan friar Angelo Clareno and on several Latin translations of Greek patristic texts, some of which are undoubtedly his own, others attributed to him.  Translated for the first time into Latin, these works have been widely disseminated. The purpose is to establish by which paths and under which circumstances these Eastern texts were introduced into West and to measure their religious, social and cultural influence. Armelle Le Huërou will work at the Department of Humanities of Ca’ Foscari under the supervision of prof. Antonio Rigo.

POPINLAT - Populism and institutions in Latin America. A comparative assessment between Ecuador and Argentina

POPINLAT scrutinises the oft-contested and under-theorised relationship between populism and institutions through a comparative analysis of the recent left-of-centre processes in Ecuador (2007-2017) and Argentina (2003-2015). This research innovatively brings into the analysis also the post-populist phase in order to assess the resistance and embeddedness of the institutionality left behind by the populist rule (2017-2020 and 2015-2019, respectively) and, as a result, allows to theorise on the possibility and conditions of emergence of a "republican populism". POPINLAT will be based at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari under the supervision of Prof. Legrenzi, with the outgoing phase taking place at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales FLACSO-Ecuador in Quito. It also envisages a secondment at the London School of Economics (LSE) and a short stay at the National University of La Matanza, in the province of Buenos Aires. 

HYB-KNOW - Hybrid Knowledge Society

HYB-KNOW is a research project situated at the intersection of philosophy, history, and social theory. The project embarks on a critical genealogy of the concept of the “knowledge society” in the 20th and 21st centuries and considers the emergent disciplines of biopolitics, cybernetics, and Earth system science. The overarching objective of this project is to explore the feasibility of a hybrid knowledge society, characterized by a robust epistemic foundation capable of addressing the multifaceted knowledge-making demands of the 21st century. The project will be implemented in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, under the supervision of Professor Pietro Daniel Omodeo.

IDENTIFICATIONS - A Psychoanalytic/Political Study of Performances Countering intra-European Cultural Racism 

This research project will study the intricate interplay of performance and race. It will investigate the ways in which both left-leaning civic performances (civil protests, speeches, policies) and artistic performances (theatre, dance, music) are capable of mobilising processes of identification that draw upon anti-racist discourses that permeate and sustain democratic institutions. Turning to discourse theory, and using a self-critical, Western European lens, the project will explore processes of identification that contest cultural racism. Goran Petrovic will conduct his research at Ca' Foscari's Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage under the supervision of prof. Francesco della Puppa.

TAMIZDAT – Transnational Book Diplomacy beyond the Cultural Cold War: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the Tamizdat

The term tamizdat (‘published abroad’) refers to Soviet and Eastern European texts, unpublished in the Eastern bloc and clandestinely smuggled and published in the West. Being the tamizdat an alternative transnational publishing practice, focusing on the individual activity of socio-cultural actors (activists of social movements, dissidents, editors, translators, literary agents, critics, diplomats etc.) involved in its production, circulation and reception, it will be possible to outline a comparative socio-cultural history of the Cold War in order to demonstrate that state and non-state book diplomacy was fundamental in avoiding the cultural isolation of the two blocs and in promoting the cross-border circulation of knowledge and ideas. Thus, focusing on the intense cultural exchanges of the time across and beyond the ‘Nylon Curtain’ (Péteri 2004)–an ideological and geopolitical border extremely permeable to cultural objects– the final aim of this research is to overcome, on the one hand, the traditional representation of Western and Eastern blocs as divided into two isolated cultures and, on the other hand, the interpretation of tamizdat as a mere ideological weapon of the ‘Cultural Cold War’. Ilaria Sicari will carry out her research at the Stanford’s Center for Russian and East European Studies under the supervision of prof. N. Naimark and at the University College of Leiden under the supervision of prof. G. Scott-Smith, while the incoming period will take place at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice with prof. D. Basosi.

GRECO - Gregory of Corinth: A Critical Edition of the Treatise On Dialects

The project is devoted to the treatise on the ancient Greek dialects written by Gregory Pardos, bishop of Corinth. This work is an important witness to the flourishing of classical studies in twelfth-century Byzantium. Gregory is an inheritor of a long tradition of studies and commentaries, not all of which survive to our day, and an active player in the lively cultural debate that surrounded the Greek language in his time. His treatise went on to enjoy considerable success among readers in the following centuries, as testified by the large number of manuscripts that preserve its text. The main objective of the project is to establish a critical text of the work, together with a study of its sources, methodologies, and reception. After a period dedicated to the study of the manuscripts which transmit the treatise, Prodi will conduct his research at Harvard’s Department of the Classics under the supervision of Prof. Alexander Riehle, and then at Ca’ Foscari's Department of Humanities under the supervision of Prof. Olga Tribulato.. 

GYNODICY - Gender-egalitarian fictions of origin in European philosophical culture (1673-1751)

This project aims at producing the first comprehensive study of the philosophical problem of “gynodicy”, that is: the incompatibility of, on one hand, a rational defence of women as naturally equal in capacities and in rights to men and, on the other, their factual subjection to men. GYNODICY concentrates on gender-egalitarian texts from the second half of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century that circulated within European philosophical culture and specifically on the gender-egalitarian fictions of origin these texts put forth with the objective of arguing against the naturalisation of women’s submission to men. The project seeks to recover a body of literature which has hitherto received scanty attention, despite its historical importance in the development of the intellectual foundations of the defence of the “equality of the sexes”. GYNODICY promotes a transnational approach to the circulation of gender-egalitarian ideas and an interdisciplinary perspective. Natalia Zorrilla will benefit from the expertise of her supervisors: Marguerite Deslauriers (McGill University, outgoing phase) and Marco Sgarbi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, return phase).