Meet the 19 'Marie Curie' Fellows at Ca' Foscari

Year after year, Ca’ Foscari keeps expanding its community of researchers who are granted a Marie Curie Fellowship, the prestigious award named after Marie Skłodowska-Curie, the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize. 

The results of the 2018 call have been announced by the European Commission, on the same day Ca’ Foscari inaugurated its academic year: this year, our University will welcome 19 new Fellowships, leaping to the 6th place in Europe. As confirmed by Repubblica.it  “Amongst the Italian universities, Ca’ Foscari bested its own record: Venice placed 6th in the European rankings, behind Copenaghen, Cambridge, Oxford, the London Imperial College and Birmingham and surpassed many prestigious institutions like the Queen Mary in London, the London University College, Leuven, the EPFL in Lausanne and the ETH in Zurich”.

Behind every single Fellowship there’s an ambitious research project, bust most of all, there are the stories of brilliant and determined researchers whose lives are going to change thanks to one of these grants, opening new career prospects. Let’s get to know them a little bit better. 

Sabrina Minuzzi is a historian and an expert in early modern books and medicine; she had previously taken part to an Oxford ERC project on the diffusion and reception of printed books in the 15th century. Thanks to this Fellowship, she will deal with the history of medicinal plant circulation and the related medical knowledge in Modern History. Minuzzi will carry out her research between Brown University (USA) and the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari, where Professor Mario Infelise will become her supervisor. 

Andrea Brazzoduro also comes from Oxford, where he has already carried out a Marie Curie project, working on the transnational history of the Algerian Independence War. His new project focuses once again on Algeria, analyzing its antifascist movements and its Third Word condition. After two years at the University of Tlemcen, Brazzoduro will continue his research at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, under Professor Matteo Legrenzi’s supervision. 

Historian Elena Bacchin, from Queen Mary University of London, will carry out a transnational investigation examining nature, representantion and international role of Italian political prisoners during the XIX century. This research project will take her to Columbia University in New York and then to the Ca Foscari Department of Humanities, under the supervision of Professor Simon Levi Sullam. 

Cristina Blanco Sío-López is Assistant Professor in European Culture and Politics at the University of Groningen, after spending the last year as Santander Senior Fellow at the University of Oxford. She will move to the University of Pittsburgh, more precisely to the Center for European Studies, to deal with matters concerning the Schengen area and the Free Movement of Persons in the European Union during the last 30 years. Here at Ca’ Foscari she will work at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, supervised by Professor Matteo Legrenzi.

Matteo Benussi is an anthropologist and he is going to study the Islamic cultural heritage in Russia. Benussi comes from Cambridge, but he will spend the next two years in Princeton, before concluding his project at the Department of Humanities with Professor Gianluca Ligi.

Mattia Zangari is a philologist from the University of Florence, who devoted a big part of his work to female saints biographies. In his Marie Curie project, he will analyze women, religion and mental illness in the Middle Ages and Early Modern history. He will soon move to Toronto and then to the Department of Humanities, with the supervision of Professor Antonio Montefusco. 

Anthropologist Monia Chies is about to complete her PhD in Tibetology and Anthropology at the  Humbold University in Berlin. She is going to study the dynamics of hydro-sociality in the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau, which includes the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Mekong. She will transfer to the University of Auckland for two years and then she will finalize her project at the Department of Economics, together with Professor Francesco Vallerani. 

Linda Armano, cultural anthropologist, will carry out her research at the University of British Columbia and the Ca' Foscari Department of Management, where, supervised by Professor Vladi Finotto, she will analyze the sensory experiences and cultural interpretations that shaped concepts like 'ethical diamonds' and 'mining ethics', thanks to a consumer research. 

Sonia Favi is an associate professor of the Ca’ Foscari Department of Asian and North African Studies, where she will eventually come back to complete her Marie Curie Fellowship after two year at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. With the supervision of Professor Bonaventura Ruperti, she will focus her research on the Tokugawa period in the history of Japan (1603-1868). 

Luca Lombardo is an italianist at the University of Notre Dame (USA). Dividing his time between the University of Toronto and the Ca’ Foscari Department of Humanities, he will deal with the culture of vernacular compositions in Dante’s Tuscany, supervised by Professor Tiziano Zanato.

Matteo Favaretto is a philologist and an expert of italian literature. He will spend a period of two years at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, before moving to the Department of Humanities here at Ca’ Foscari, where his project will be supervised by Professor Tiziano Zanato. In his research activity, Favaretto will investigate the presence of prosimetra in vulgar tongue in the early centuries of Italian Literature 

Maria Chiara Rioli, historian of the Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée University, will move first to Fordham University and then to the Ca’ Foscari Department of Asian and North African Studies, with the goal of analyzing the activity of the St. James Association and its influence on the relationships between the Christian and Jewish communities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under the supervision of Professor Marcella Simoni. 

The 7 European Fellowships

Tamar Blickstein is an American anthropologist, postdoc at the Freie Universitat in Berlin. She will come to the Ca’ Foscari Department of Humanities to conduct a research on the effects of deforestation on different social groups in the South American Chaco, with the supervision of Professor Valentina Bonifacio. 

Chiara Mannoni, art historian the the University of Auckland, will spend the next three years at the Ca’ Foscari Department of Philosphy and Cultural Heritage to investigate on the origins of legal protection of cultural and artistic heritage, together with Professor Chiara Piva.

Economic historian Federico D'Onofrio, from the University of Lausanne, will transfer to Ca’ Foscari to carry on his research at the Department of Management, focusing on the history of European agriculture, supervised by Professor Giovanni Favero. 

CNR (Italy’s National Research Center) physicist Niccolò Maffezzoli will move to the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics to carry out his research project and study the employment of artificial intelligence for the study of ice cores, under the supervision of Professor Carlo Barbante.  

Urska Lampe, historian of the IRRIS, Institute for Research, Development and Strategies of Society, Culture and Environment in Primorska, will move to Ca’ Foscari for a project that focuses on Italian war prisoners in Yugoslavia after WWII. Her supervisor will be Professor Alessandro Casellato, at the Department for Humanities. 

Anna Gasperini, an expert on Victorian history, culture and medicine from the National University of Ireland, will conduct a study on nutrition discourses in children literature in England and Italy during the XIX century. She will be supervised by Professor Laura Tosi at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies.  

Ali Kharrazi, assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, will divide his work between the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics and the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change, where he will focus on environmental sustainability, by studying the impact of climate change on food security. His project will be supervised by Professor Carlo Carraro.

Over 10.000 applications

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships are part of ‘Horizon 2020’, Europe’s programme for research and innovation. This year, the European Commission has allocated 273 million euros to the project, 24.3 milion more than last year. The almost ten-thousand applicants have been narrowed down to 1351 winners.  The Marie Curie Scholarships represent a funding opportunity for experienced and brilliant researchers who intend on pursuing their own research project in an institution of their choice in a country other than the one they currently work in. This kind of mobility encourages the dissemination of talents, while also fostering inter-university collaborations all over the world.

The 2019 call for applications will remain open from April 11th to September 11th 2019 - read more