This section presents all past projects related to Ca' Foscari's Global Challenges. To discover the on-going projects, please visit the page Projects.
ClimeFIsh - Sustainable fish production under climate change
Ca’ Foscari scholars have been involved in the ClimeFish project, Co-creating a Decision Support Framework to ensure sustainable fish production in Europe under climate change.
ClimeFish is a Horizon 2020 project, which involves 21 academic and nonacademic partners from all over Europe and focuses on marine and freshwater fisheries and aquaculture, It aims to forecast effects of climate changes at the species and ecosystem level, creating responsive management schemes, and delivering a decision support framework cocreated with stakeholders.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Fabio Pranovi
Duration: 01/04/2016 - 30/03/2020
BIOPOL - Leather making BioPolymers from biomasses and industrial by products
The LIFE BIOPOL project (Production of Leather making BioPolymers from biomasses and industrial by products, through Life Cycle Designed processes) aimed to demonstrate the technical performance and economic viability of an innovative process for producing new biopolymers (green chemicals) to be used in the tanning industry. These will be produced by recycling waste biomass from the related tanning process and agro-food industries. By doing so, the project aims to help implement the EU Industrial Emissions Directive, the BREF document, and the REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) Regulation, which all recommend that industry should decrease water consumption and the use of hazardous chemicals and pollutants such as heavy metals, formaldehyde, chromium, chlorinated paraffin, VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and inorganic salts.
Website
Researcher: Valentina Beghetto
Duration: 01/07/2016 - 30/09/2019
Smart manufacturing for EU Growth
"MAKERS -Smart Manufacturing for EU Growth and Prosperity" brings together leaders from business, academia and policy to study issues related to the drivers and dynamics of sustaining the competitiveness of EU manufacturing sectors.
The project’s innovative research, training and mobility activities address key concerns related to the historic opportunity for the EU to lead a manufacturing renaissance that not only upgrades existing manufacturing competences but, more importantly, develops new technological capabilities across EU regions to support regional industrial resilience for more distributed and sustainable socioeconomic growth and prosperity.
This project is funded by Horizon 2020 - Research and innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) and is developed at the Ca’ Foscari Economics Department.
Website
Researcher: Mario Volpe
Duration: 01/01/2016 - 31/12/2018
Chinese Labour in a Global Perspective
In the past few years, much has been written about a “rights awakening” allegedly undergoing among internal migrant workers in China.
But how do Chinese workers perceive their rights? What role do Chinese state and nonstate actors play in shaping this perception? And, more important, how will these shifting dynamics of Chinese labour activism affect the future of China as a “world factory”? This research, a Marie Curie Global fellowship won by Ivan Franceschini, will not only give a meaningful contribution to the academic debate, but will also provide European policy- makers, companies, trade unions and labour NGOs with much needed knowledge on how to address Chinese labour issues in this new phase of the globalization process.
Researcher: Renzo Cavalieri
Duration: 01/12/2015 - 30/11/2018
Making the Most of Social Science to Build Better Policies - Knowledge for Use
Knowledge For Use (K4U) is an ERC Advanced grant hosted by the University of Durham, involving Ca' Foscari researchers.
The project will construct a radically new picture of how to use social science to build better social policies and it will launch an entire new field in philosophy: the philosophy of social technology.
K4U will provide not just a theoretical but a practical understanding‐ for users: intelligible and practically helpful to those who need to estimate and balance the effectiveness, the evidence, the chances of success, the costs, the benefits, the winners and losers, and the social, moral, political and cultural acceptability of proposed policies.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Eleonora Montuschi
Duration: 01/11/2015 - 30/10/2020
Funding: European Research Council
BIFLOW - Bilingualism in Florentine and Tuscan Works
The BIFLOW project explores multilingualism in central and northern Italy from the thirteenth century to the beginning of the fifteenth.
It will begin with the systematic gathering of texts available in multiple languages and then lead to the construction of the first digital catalogue of these works.
This will then facilitate the creation of a map of the multilingual environments in which intellectuals were immersed at the time of Dante.
The subject of this ERC Starting grant, therefore, is not merely the texts themselves, but also the mindset of mediaeval intellectuals, whose immersion in a multilingual context in some ways parallels our contemporary experience of globalization.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Antonio Montefusco
Duration: 01/10/2015 - 30/09/2020
Funding: European Research Council (ERC)
NANOFASE - Nanomaterial Fate and Speciation in the Environment
Ca’ Foscari researchers have been involved in the Nanomaterial Fate and Speciation in the Environment NANOFASE project (Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies), funded by Horizon 2020.
Progress is needed in the prediction of environmental distribution, concentration and form (speciation) of nanomaterials, to allow early assessment of potential environmental and human exposure and risks, to facilitate safe product design and to include these aspects in nano regulation.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Antonio Marcomini
Duration: 01/09/2015 - 31/08/2019
Funding:Horizon 2020 Industrial Leadership: Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Nanotechnologies
Reevaluating minor rivers as cultural landscapes
The project "EUWATHER - European Waterways Heritage: Reevaluating European minor rivers and canals as cultural landscapes" is funded by the EU Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage and aims to promote a knowledge of the unique cultural heritage of minor waterways and historical canals in 4 European pilot regions located in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
The overall objective is to develop a better governance, focusing on new opportunities for sustainable development and ecotourism.
Website
Researcher: Francesco Vallerani
Duration: 01/09/2015 - 31/08/2017
NANORESTART - Nanomaterials for the Restoration of works of art
Funded by Horizon 2020, "NANORESTART - NANOmaterials for the REStoration of works of ART" will develop a new framework with respect to the state of the art of conservation science.
It is devoted to the development of nanomaterials to ensure the longterm protection and security of modern/contemporary cultural heritage by taking into account environmental and human risks, feasibility and the cost of materials.
The project brings together centres of excellence in the field of the synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials, world- leading chemical industries and SMEs operating in R&D and International and European centres for conservation, education and museums.
They will assess new materials through their use with artefacts in urgent need of conservation and then disseminate the resulting knowledge internationally.
Project website / EU Cordis database
Researcher: Antonio Marcomini
Duration: 01/06/2015 - 30/11/2018