Meet our G@V fellows

Marina Perez De Arcos

EUHUMAN - European Humanitarian Networks during the Great War

The First World War (WWI) remains one of the most prominent topics of historical enquiry due to its unprecedented destruction, violence, impact, and global scale. Despite its significance, the exploration of humanitarianism within the war has often been sidelined. The project aims to unearth new evidence and provide an analysis of humanitarian efforts carried out by European protecting powers to create a new body of knowledge on the origins of humanitarianism in Europe. The project moves forward the literature to Europeanise WWI humanitarianism, further explore new regions and subjects of aid, and draw unmapped transnational connections between relief efforts. Moreover, at a time when the past is frequently misconstrued and misused to justify political discord and military aggression, the project will contribute to the crucial effort to uncover and correct the historical record based on rigorous archival research. Crucially, it is a reminder that European non-belligerence did not mean humanitarian non-involvement during the Great War, nor does it now a century later. 

Research Institute for Digital and Cultural Heritage
Supervisor: Matteo Legrenzi, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage
Duration: 24 months, from November 2023

Arreyndip Nkongho Ayuketang

ADRR2023 - When concurrent extreme weather events meet breadbasket regions in escalating inter-regional conflict: Cascading economic impact assessment in the global food market

The ADRR2023 project aims to assess the first and high-order economic impacts on the regional and global food markets when extreme weather events occur over a breadbasket region/regions involved in an escalating  inter-regional conflict with a case study of the Russia-Ukraine war. This project will also model other scenarios involving breadbasket regions likely to be involved in escalating conflicts, such as the emerging conflicts between Russia and NATO, Russia and the U.S., China and the U.S., and China and Taiwan, along with projected weather extremes under future warming. Additionally, the project will investigate the benefits of climate mitigation and conflict resolutions on the food market. This approach and the expected results will help raise awareness of impending economic crises before they occur, and thus provide early preparedness. 

Research Institute for Complexity
Supervisor: Francesco Bosello, Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics
Duration: 24 months, from October 2023

Juan Alberto Ruiz Casado

Constructing the “enemy”: A discourse theoretical analysis of the hegemonic struggle for Taiwan (TaiwanDTA)

TaiwanDTA addresses contemporary discourses concerning the Taiwan Strait conflict, both within and outside of Taiwan, in the context of the multifaceted hegemonic competition between China and the US. Discursive practices regarding Taiwan have undergone a systemic change since 2016, leading to a rise in polarization, distrust, and antagonism. The general research objectives are to explore: 1) how the signifiers “Taiwan” and “China” are articulated by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses; and 2), how “Taiwaneseness” is constructed vis-à-vis the “Chinese threat” in political, journalistic, and academic spheres. One particular contribution is to analyse the effects of Manichean anti-China imaginaries in the Western-centric hegemonic narrative. The project employs an interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines discourse-theoretical analysis (DTA) with diverse fields including history, privilege, IR, and populism. The ultimate goal of this project is to advance the understanding of the Taiwan Strait conflict, which would lead to better policies and decision-making to address this global security challenge.

Research Institute for Social Innovation
Supervisor: Duccio Basosi, Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies
Duration: 24 months, from July 2023

Frédéric Mège 

BICAS – Building and Inhabiting the City in Ancient Sicily

The project BICAS proposes to investigate the route of construction stone from the quarry to the building in two cities of Ancient Sicily, Megara Hyblaia and Selinous, between the 7th and the 1st centuries BCE. The strategies set up by the inhabitants to find, to get and to use this material tell us a great deal about the way these ancient cities have developed. Several types of survey, when combined, will fuel the inquiries on extraction and transportation methods, so as to understand the working modes. Secondly, the study of the interconnections between the stone quarries, the transportation routes and the urban space will shed light on the way each city exerted command on its territory. Finally, BICAS will give insights on the socio-political evolutions in the metropolis (Megara) and its colony (Selinous), under the prism of their respective building programmes. Based on innovative tools and cross-disciplinary approach, the project will yield unprecedented information on how the inhabitants of Megara Hyblaia and Selinous concretely constructed their cities. Furthermore, the close comparison with a similar on-going project in Delos and Delphi will lead to a global understanding of the topic in the ancient Greek World.

Research Institute for Digital and Cultural Heritage
Supervisor: Luigi Sperti, Department of Humanities
Duration: 24 months, from December 2023

Claudia Stern

CONCHILMEM  Condorito: Using graphic humor to untangle subjectivities of trauma, classes, gender, and the idea of race across Chile’s divided memory (1970-1990) 

Daphne Lappa

CraftingOrthodoxies - Borderland Religiosity in the Eastern Mediterranean: Greeks and Latins Crafting Local Christian Orthodoxies. The Cases of Venetian Corfu and Ottoman Naxos, 17th-early 19th centuries 

Noemi Quagliati

BEVVL - Bird’s-Eye Views of the Venetian Lagoon. Planetary Visions and Birdscapes of an Aquatic Ecosystem

Sana Ullah

Elena Zhirukhina

Saipira Furstenberg

RESP2REPRESSION - Understanding Host States Responses to Transnational Authoritarianism

This project examines how democratic host states respond to authoritarian repressive actions against individuals residing outside their territorial jurisdiction. Existing research has focused on the extent to which authoritarian states control, repress and police their population across borders, but few studies have considered how such interventions have been received in host states which are recipients of the diaspora community and transnational repression. The project’s interdisciplinary approach contributes to advance our understanding on the international dimension of authoritarian rule and presents solutions through building more resilient policy responses from democratic host states and institutions faced with transnational repression practices. The project is developed in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and GIGA Berlin.

Research Institute for International Studies
Supervisor: Francesco Della Puppa, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage
Duration: 24 months, from June 2022

Saretta Marotta

P.E.A.C.E. - Pius XII Holy See facing the European Attempts for a Catholic Ecumenism after WW2 (1939-1958)

P.E.A.C.E. will study the reactions and strategies developed by the Holy See towards the growth of the international ecumenical movement and its influence within European Catholicism between WW2 and the Second Vatican Council, i.e. the years of Pius XII's pontificate (1939-1958). The opening in March 2020 of new funds of the Vatican archives rekindled the attention of historians on this papacy: P.E.A.C.E. proposes not only a new subject, but also a new interpretative key to Pius XII’s pontificate. The hypothesis of the project is that these experiences of dialogue not only produced among Catholics a theological renewal that would later pave the way for the Second Vatican Council, but also that the impact of the ecumenical phenomenon caused conditioning and gradual openings in some fields within the Roman Curia. This unusual reading of Pius XII's pontificate may succeed in overturning some conventional interpretations of this papacy, explaining how dependent and consequential his choices were also in other spheres, such as in the biblical, liturgical, social and even political fields. P.E.A.C.E. will thus analyze the dynamic of action-reaction between the activity of local groups engaged in Catholic ecumenism and the surveillance and control by the Roman authorities, thus by combining the official Vatican documentation with the huge documentary heritage of individuals and institutions located all over Europe.

Research Institute for Digital and Cultural Heritage
Supervisor: Giovanni Vian, Department of Humanities
Duration: 24 months, from July 2022

Ivan Matijasic

MoCHA - Memories of Classical and Hellenistic Athens

What is left of Athenian history when historiographical texts are dismembered in later sources? The project considers the reception, changes, and rearrangement of Classical and Hellenistic historiography on Athens in lexica, etymologica and scholarly works of the Roman imperial and Byzantine ages. It aims to broaden our knowledge of the historiography on Athens, reassessing the significance of fragmentary texts, and to clarify the role of Greek lexicography and other scholarly works in transmitting these fragments. A digital resource called Digital Memories of Athens (DMoA) will be set up for collecting, analysing, and studying fragmentary texts related to Athenian history, thus allowing to provide some answers to the opening research question.

Research Institute for Digital and Cultural Heritage
Supervisor: Claudia Antonetti, Department of Humanities
Duration: 24 months, from July 2022

Daily Rodríguez Padrón

Green-3Dsign - Green 3D-printing Design of Advanced Catalytic Architectures

Green-3D SIGN project aims at the development of a circular economy concept employing sustainable and innovative technologies based on mechanochemical through extrusion methods (MtE) and 3D- printing. The project will focus on the valorization of waste streams of fishery industries as a source of biopolymers, with the overarching goal to identify a flexible biorefining scheme where waste management, chemical treatments of residues, and commercial promotion and production scalability are integrated.

Research Institute for Green and Blue Growth
Supervisor: Maurizio Selva, Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems
Duration: 24 months, from November 2022

Máté Szalai

Innovating SSFP - Innovating Small State Foreign Policy in the Post-Covid Context – Influence-building of Small Gulf States in Global Powers

The research project aims to compare how small states of the Gulf region build their relations with superpowers such as the United States, the European Union, Russia, and China in the context of the post-CoVID-19 international order. In the framework of small state studies, the investigation seeks to unfold how Gulf actors move beyond state-level relationship-building and utilise innovative tools to foster elite-to-elite relations in various sectors, including energy, sports, and creative industries. The project will contribute not just to the demystification of the activities of small Gulf states, but also to the discussion on the role of the European Union in global politics and the improvement of theories related to small state foreign policy. 

Research Institute for International Studies
Supervisor: Matteo Legrenzi, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage
Duration: 24 months, from September 2022

Gergana Tzvetkova

RESIST- SteREotyping, DiSInformation, and PoliticiSaTion: links between attacks against the Istanbul Convention and increased online gender-based violence

The project examines how disinformation-driven false and harmful narratives could have a negative influence on the protection and promotion of human rights and on efforts to counter gender-based violence (GBV) against women in particular. Online GBV against women and disinformation are two phenomena posing grave risks to European Union societies. Their acuteness, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, underscores this interdisciplinary project’s strong social significance and policy relevance. Thus, the research seeks to identify and analyse in depth specific harmful and false narratives, as well as to formulate positive narratives and policy recommendations to neutralise them. 

Research Institute for Social Innovation
Supervisor: Sara De Vido, Department of Economics
Duration: 24 months, from October 2022

Emanuela Vai

MIRe - Monstruous and Marvellous Musical Instruments: Digital Humanities and Renaissance Music Heritage in the Global Context

Musical instruments of the Italian Renaissance period were often elaborately decorated, featuring arabesque patterns, emblems, and carvings of fantastic, monstrous and marvellous creatures. Yet these decorative aspects have eluded critical attention. Combining 3D photogrammetry and historical archival analysis, this interdisciplinary digital humanities project will develop a digital image collection and critical analysis of musical instrument decoration and ornamentation. The project will examine what these decorative elements say about the visual, material, and (non-)auditory dimensions of early modern music cultures. 

Research Institute for Digital and Cultural Heritage
Supervisor: Franz Fisher, co-supervisor Marco Sgarbi, Department of Humanities
Duration: 24 months, from January 2023