PRIN

Titolo programma / Ente finanziatore: PRIN 2020 -MUR 

Titolo DeMa -Decision-Making in the Age of Emergencies. New Paradigms in Recognition and Protection of Rights 

Coordinatore di unità Emma A. Imparato

Data inizio 25/05/2022

Data fine 30/10/2025

Link

Codice Prin_2020_Imparato

Descrizione del progetto: How do constitutional democracies meet new challenges? In the last decades, a sequence of emergencies (international terrorism, economic and financial turmoil, pandemic or epidemic waves) has put pressure on
democratic governments. These have also been confronted by the strengthening of two major trends originating in the 20th century, i.e. the decreasing national dimensions of law, on one hand, and the technological revolution, on the other.
New decision-makers and decision-making processes emerged, affecting the core of contemporary democracies, that is the regulation of rights and freedoms.
Given the proliferation of decision-makers, becomes very important to verify which bodies and branches govern and manage the emergencies. What are the methods, purposes and motivations in their decision-making process?
The project identifies five categories of cross cutting “rationales” interacting in this dynamic, complex environment. They all enter into the decisional process of States and international organizations, who are thus exposed to their combined effects:
a) the political rationale: with the raise of democratic governments, the people’s representatives are constitutionally endowed with the main responsibilities in regulating rights – and so protecting them;
b) the judicial rationale: the 20th century witnessed an exponential rise of the juridification of disputes, with a huge power wielded by courts; in the present complex scenario, courts maintain a crucial role as guardians of rights;
c) the economic rationale: how does the economy impacts on rights has been a crucial welfare state issue; in recent decades, economic actors have acquired decision-making powers of their own too;
d) the scientific rationale: emergencies produce the pressing need to rely on scientific expertise, how does the legislative, the administrative, and the judicial process gets it and acts on it?
e) the technological rationale: human and non-human decision-making are interrelated; the use of technology incorporating automation does not exclude human intervention, which should be present in any case.
The research examines the impact that the age of emergencies has on rights and freedoms, and to so it advances the comparative study of these interrelated five “rationales” affecting the decisional processes in contemporary democracies, thus recognizing the complex nature of the challenges raised by emergencies.
The research purpose is to map the distance between the founding constitutional principles of our society and their reformulation, adaptation, and balancing under emergencies. The focus on the decision-making processes and their impact on rights and freedoms is justified because rights and freedoms are at the core of the constitutionalism, and consequently at the center of the legal systems based on the separation of powers and the protection of individual rights.

Titolo programma / Ente finanziatore: PRIN 2022 -MUR 

Titolo Italy's energy governance in the global economy and politics: the role of natural gas in the national energy transition

Coordinatore di unità Simone Selva

Data inizio 30/09/2022

Data fine 26/01/2026

Link

Codice 2022XYSH4K

Descrizione del progetto: Italy was one of the oil consuming Countries that most of all suffered from the consequences of the oil shocks of the 1970s, because of the shortage of national oil production and the growing dependence on oil imports. The oil shocks made the national energy security crucial to the Country’s political agenda and led to the drawing up of a new national energy strategy for the diversification of supply sources, among which the natural gas played a pivotal role. Since then, Italy has become one of Europe's biggest importers of natural gas. Italy has no nuclear capability, only two operational coal power plants, and gets only 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources, while natural gas accounts for approximately 45% of the total national energy production. In the last 10 years, Italy’s gas consumption has remained constant, while gas production has been sharply reduced, so that in 2021 natural gas imports has accounted for 90% of Italy’s gas supply. This research project is an innovative effort to investigate the interplay between the national and international dimensions of Italy’s energy strategy in the decades that followed the oil shocks, so as to understand how the Country has become increasingly dependent on gas imports. The basic assumption of the project is that as a result of the oil shocks energy has ceased to be a simple commodity, subject to normal market logic, but has become a major political issue that fells within the scope of national security policy and affects national and international politics.The key research questions that will be addressed by this project are the following:
1) The national dimension: what decision-making process has made natural gas crucial in the national energy production?
2) The international dimension: where and how has Italy decided to get natural gas?3) The operational dimension: what role has Eni (Italy’s State-owned energy company) played in the global natural gas market?
All of them are strictly interconnected issues, as they are parts of a single major problem: the national energy security (which is still of crucial importance, as clearly shown by the consequences of the current Russian-Ukrainian war). The access to some hitherto unavailable archival sources, as well as a truly interdisciplinary approach of the research units, whose members are scholars of history of international relations, economic history and contemporary history, will allow the project to strengthen the conclusions reached by existing literature and offer a most original prospect on a crucial aspect of the recent Italian political and economic history, the Country’s growing reliance on foreign energy supplies. The capacity of the research units to move across disciplinary boundaries is guaranteed by the different background and expertise of the scholars involved, while the credibility of the project is assured by the fact that the research units have a longstanding history of pioneering research in these fields.

Titolo programma / Ente finanziatore: PRIN 2022 -MUR 

Titolo Itineraries of Philosophy and Science from Baghdad to Florence: Albert the Great, his Sources and his Legacies

Coordinatore di unità Antonella Sannino

Data inizio 01/10/2023

Data fine 18/10/2025        Data Proroga   28/02/2026

Link  https://www.bphv.eu/en/quotations

Codice PRIN 20225LFCMZ

Codice ERC SH - Social Sciences and Humanities

Descrizione del progetto: In medieval philosophy, theology, and science, Albert the Great (d. 1280; henceforth: AtG) represents the highest example of
reliance on authors of different cultural provenances, and his multifarious references to sources granted him paramount influence in coeval and subsequent European thought. Building on previous research, the project aims at a systematic analysis of the multi-cultural background of the philosophical, theological and scriptural works of AtG, and of the impact of his use of sources in contemporary and later authors, circles, and intellectual trends. Research on a series of representative test-cases chosen among the main disciplinary and doctrinal areas of AtG’s production will lead to:
A) a full appreciation of the wide range of Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew and other oriental sources employed by Albert in his writings, a detailed explanation of the finality of this intertextual and intercultural strategy, and a study of the wide resonance in subsequent authors of the repository of sources which AtG made available to Latinity, with respect to university institutions (faculties of arts), ecclesiastic academic centers (Dominican school of Cologne), and non-academic contexts (cultural environments of Dante Alighieri), involving pseudo-epigraphical writings, vernacular productions, and encyclopedias;
B) a new interpretation of the crucial phase of the Middle Ages in which AtG lived (13th century) from an intercultural perspective, with the philosophy of Greek origin playing the pivotal role of rational common ground at the intersection of the three Mediterranean cultures, across dogmatic barriers and political fluctuations;
C) an attempt to apply AtG's model of intercultural philosophical dialogue to contemporary concerns, with special regards to issues
like the theory of the alleged “clash of civilizations”, the debate about the “cultural roots” of Europe, and the project of a sustainable, inclusive, and tolerant society, respectful of human diversity and attentive to environmental needs.
The most up-to-date technologies in digital humanities and computer science will assist the historical and philological research of the project by planning and start building an online inventory of the sources quoted by AtG in his works, in the form of a searchable repository of citations. In its final form, the project’s front-end will also contain codicological and bibliographical tools, as well as devices for facilitating the exchange of ideas between experts of AtG and of medieval philosophy in general. This technical apparatus aims to become progressively a full-fledged open-access portal on the life, works, and thought of AtG and on his fortune until nowadays.