Since it opened in May 2018, the Ca’ Foscari Baku Office has facilitated cultural and intellectual exchange between the broader Azerbaijani community and the university’s community of scholars and students in a variety of ways and contexts. Its activities - some of which are recurring annual initiatives, some of which are unique special events - fall into three different categories:
- enchancing cultural exchange and mutual understanding;
- fostering academic cooperation;
- creating opportunities for students.
Enchancing cultural exchange and mutual understanding
Ongoing partnerships and collaborations
Logo of Italian Piazza festival in Baku
In June 2022, Ca' Foscari was the only academic partner of the first edition of "Italian Piazza – Festival of Gastronomic Entertainment", which was organised by Italia.az with the patronage of the Italian Embassy in Baku and the Italian Trade Agency. Bringing together representatives from more than 50 Italian and Azerbaijani companies active in the agro-food industry, the Festival aimed to promote the excellence in Italian culture and entrepreneurship as well as to develop business relations between the two countries, with a view to developing the distribution of Italian brands in Azerbaijan.
Ca' Foscari contribution to Italian Piazza came chiefly in the Cultural Exchange domain of the Festival and in the guise of three master classes offered to the business partners of the event as well as to its participants. Prof. Vladi Finotto, an associate professor of Business Economics and Management and director of the Ca’ Foscari Challenge School professional master’s programme in "Culture of food and wine: promoting Made in Italy excellence", gave a lecture entitled “Made in Italy meets Azerbaijan: challenges and prospects for the promotion of the Italian agrifood sector”. The lecture explored the different strategies through which Italian food and wine have been promoted in different countries and dealt with the opportunities and challenges posed by Azerbaijan. Indeed, since it is situated at the intersection between product quality, know-how, territories and culture, the value of Italian products requires adequate promotional strategies, especially when establishing relationships with countries whose histories, cultures and traditions require the creation of common ground and empathy.
Prof. Christine Mauracher, a full professor in Ca’ Foscari’s Department of Management and the director of the university’s Agrifood Management and Innovation Lab, offered another master class, in this case focused on “Promoting Italian food and wine in the digital world: digital, multi-channel and storytelling marketing”. As digital technologies allow SMEs to broaden the geography of their markets, to profile potential clients effectively, to customize their promotion and to tell rich and elaborate stories in a manner that traditional media does not allow, the master class showed the results of recent research initiatives aimed at mapping Italian SMEs’ digital marketing strategies and singled out trends and development trajectories for the food and wine sector.
For her part, Prof. Elisabetta Ragagnin, an associate professor in Ca’ Foscari’s Department of Asian and North African Studies and an expert in Turkic and Mongolic linguistics, philology, cultural studies and literature, as well as in Silk Road studies, gave a master class entitled “A special gastronomic stop along the Silk Road: the Azerbaijani cuisine”. On the base of Turkic historical sources and the personal experiences of the lecturer, the audience was invited on a culinary journey through steppes, deserts, caravansaries, palaces and modern gourmet restaurants with the purpose of understanding the various dimensions that characterise the multi-layered and exquisitely varied Azerbaijanian cuisine.
Academic parternship with the “Imagine” Euro Tolerance Festival
Ca’ Foscari has been an academic partner of the “Imagine” Euro Tolerance Festival since 2018. The festival focuses on the promotion of intercultural dialogue, diversity and tolerance through the organization of over a week of events and initiatives coordinated by the European Union’s delegation in Azerbaijan.
The second annual Imagine Euro Tolerance Festival was held in Baku from 2 to 27 May 2018. The festival marked the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights as well as the tenth anniversary of the presence of the delegation of the European Union in Baku. Apart from the embassies of EU member states, the event also involved the participation of the embassies of Switzerland, Norway, Brazil, Costa Rica, Israel, Peru, Moldova, Mexico, the United States and Argentina, and the programme was managed by Ca’ Foscari’s partner organization, United Cultures.
As its contribution to the festival, Ca’ Foscari organized academic lectures in two of the most prestigious universities in Azerbaijan: ADA University, with which Ca’ Foscari has a cooperation agreement, and the Azerbaijan University of Languages. The lectures were given by Prof. Carlo Frappi, a researcher in the Department of Asian and North African Studies. The lectures addressed the relationship between identity and foreign policy, especially with regard to the promotion of multiculturalism in Azerbaijan as both the premise for and a tool of national foreign politics.
The third edition of the festival was held from 1 to 14 May 2019 not only in Baku, but also in the city of Ganja. This celebrated the tenth anniversary of the EU Eastern Partnership that was launched in 2009 within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). As usual, the festival was organized in partnership with the embassies of the EU member states as well as others.
As part of the festival, more than 30 feature films and documentaries on the themes of tolerance and diversity were presented with the participation of several well-known film directors. Ca’ Foscari contributed with the screening of “Sashka”, a short film by the young Polish director Katarzyna Lesisz that won the International Competition of the ninth edition of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival (SFF). The film’s exploration of the phenomena of migration and cultural integration in the European context was ideally suited to the Imagine Festival’s theme of tolerance.
Collaboration on Italian Design Day in Baku
Every March, Italy’s world-renowned design is celebrated through the organization of Italian Design Day in more than 100 cities around the world. Within this framework, since 2019 Ca’ Foscari has been the academic partner of the Italian Design Day organized in Baku by the Italian Embassy in collaboration with the Azerbaijani branch of the Italian Trade Agency, in order to help promote a greater and more fruitful awareness of Italian culture abroad.
The design industry is a distinctive aspect of the “Made in Italy” brand, for it unites beauty and originality with high-quality raw materials and innovative production methods while also expressing the culture and traditions of Italy’s various regions. Italian Design Day is one of the pillars of the “Italian Way of Life” promotion strategy ideated and supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its network of embassies, consulates and Italian Cultural Institutes around the world, together with the promotion of Italy’s language, cuisine, higher education system, network of museums and cinema.
The 2019 edition of the event took place on 6 March 2019 at the Stone Chronicle Museum and the Yarat Contemporary Art Centre.
The programme of the 2019 Italian Design Day included exhibitions, food and wine tastings and concerts.
Patronage of and participation in the Italian–Azerbaijani International Film Festival
Together with the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts, the Azerbaijan University of Languages and the Sapienza University of Rome, Ca’ Foscari is an academic partner of the Italian-Azerbaijani International Film Festival held in Baku, whose first edition took place from 25 to 30 January 2019. Organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the film production company Imago Group, United Cultures and the publisher Sandro Teti Editore in cooperation with the Embassy of Italy, the Nizami Cinema Center and The Landmark, the festival promotes the past and present of the cinema industry in both Italy and Azerbaijan. By showcasing the film industries of both countries, the festival shines a light on their similarities and differences, bringing them to the forefront of international film discourse.
Through its focus on the cinematographic language, the festival promotes a richer familiarity with the Italian and Azerbaijan cultures while also incorporating moments of contact with other international cinematographic realities and drawing attention to new artists and innovative cinematic trends.
The 2019 edition of the festival screened a selection of contemporary films in a number of venues and culminated in an award ceremony on the final evening. Remo Girone, an actor and director well known throughout the former Eastern Bloc for his portrayal of Tano Cariddi in the television show “La Piovra”, sat on the jury while Italian screenwriter and director Claudio Rossi Massimi served as the festival’s art director. The festival’s winners were awarded specially prepared "Zoroaster Awards" that recall the ancient pirolatric cult developed in Azerbaijan.
Ca’ Foscari looks forward to upcoming collaborations with the film festival.
Academic partnership with the Fantazia Festival, Baku’s cultural heritage festival
On the occasion of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, the European Union’s delegation in Azerbaijan organized the first annual Fantazia Festival in cooperation with the embassies of EU member states with the particular involvement of those representing Germany, France, Greece, Poland, Croatia, the Netherlands and Hungary. The festival took place from 1 to 10 November 2018, and Ca’ Foscari collaborated as an academic partner of the event.
The festival is dedicate to increasing awareness of the importance of preserving cultural heritage in general, but especially that of Azerbaijan, and its varied programme included concerts, guided tours, workshops, film screenings, exhibitions, art installations, and moments of debate with international and local experts.
Ca’ Foscari University was the festival’s sole academic partner and participated with a public lecture entitled “Following in Marco Polo’s Footsteps: New Projects for the Valorization of the Cultural Heritage of the Silk Roads”. The lecture was given by Prof. Tiziana Lippiello, a sinologist and the current Vice Rector of Ca’ Foscari. Going back to Marco Polo’s day, the lecture discussed the longstanding relationship between Venice and the Silk Road and described what Ca’ Foscari, in cooperation with the municipality, is doing to revive and reinvigorate Eurasian cultural and commercial relations, especially with regard to its connections with Azerbaijan.
Ca’ Foscari also contributed to the festival by offering a screening of Luchino Visconti’s feature film “Senso”. In order to provide an interpretive framework for appreciating the film’s contribution to the history of cinema and to the depiction of Venice on the big screen, the screening was preceded by an introductory video lecture by Prof. Maria Roberta Novielli, a scholar of film history at Ca’ Foscari and the artistic director of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival.
Special events
The Italian-Azerbaijani Forum for Dialogue: building bridges, connecting societies
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Italy and Azerbaijan, Ca' Foscari and the Baku-based Topchubashov Center held a Forum for Dialogue aimed at discussing the rapidly expanding interconnections between Italian and Azerbaijani society. The one-day event was held on 18 June 2022 at The Landmark Cinema Hall in cooperation with the Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction, the Azerbaijan University of Languages, and The Landmark itself.
The Forum offered a moment for reflecting upon the current state of bilateral relations from a non-institutional point of view and built upon the observations that there is a bottom-up cultural contamination that is currently blossoming and that the work of young researchers, scholars, artists, and exchange students is not only central to contemporary Italian-Azerbaijani relations, but is also critical to their future sustainability. Thus, the Forum offered an opportunity for a broader exchange of views between academic and cultural stakeholders, highlighting the key strengths of C2C contact, as well as those areas in which it is still possible to invest with the purpose of further enhancing cultural exchange.
The Forum’s programme was divided into four moments dedicated respectively to: a Chat Show aimed at exchanging the life experiences of young Italian and Azerbaijani students and researchers; an Expert Talk in which specialists in different disciplines developing projects connecting the two countries shared their experience and offered their advice to the audience; an Outlook of cultural activities, which brought together agents of cultural contamination in Azerbaijan; and a Photographic Crossover, which offered the perspectives of Italian and Azerbaijani visual artists on how they see and represent their respective partner countries.
Baroque–mugham concert showcasing the musical heritage of Venice and Azerbaijan
In collaboration with its partner United Cultures, Ca’ Foscari organized a concert entitled “Water and Fire” that presented a repertoire of Baroque music and mugham on 19 April 2019 at the Azerbaijan State Academy Opera & Ballet Theatre.
Venice and Azerbaijan have long been connected by the Silk Road, and this event aimed to explore some points of connection between the musical cultures of these two places by presenting Western Baroque music together with mugham, the traditional music of the Azerbaijani people, in the same concert.
While these two kinds of music at first seem markedly different, they in fact share a great deal, especially with respect to their approaches to melody and harmony.
Never performed before, “Water and Fire” was conducted by Eyubb Guliyev and was introduced by Ca’ Foscari professor Giovanni De Zorzi, an ethnomusicologist who is also active as a professional musician. Prof. De Zorzi provided an intellectual framework for comparing the two musical genres in order to foster a more profound appreciation of how much these two kinds of music have in common.
The concert also involved the participation of the Ambassador of Italian Culture in the World Luisa Sello, a renowned flautist, as well as Farida Mammadova (soprano), Sahib Pashazade (tar), Togrul Asadullayev (kamancha), Soltan Aliyev (nagara), Kamalia Alizade (piano) and the Orchestra of Baku Opera Theater. The concert also benefited from the talented art direction of Italian composer Stefano Muscaritolo.
Exploring women's rights and gender equality at a contemporary art festival
This year Ca’ Foscari University of Venice was the exclusive academic partner of “Maiden Tower: To Be A Woman”, a festival of contemporary art organized from September 17 to 27 in Baku by the Delegation of the European Union to Azerbaijan on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the liberation of Azerbaijani women. The festival’s aim was to shine a spotlight on the role of women both in Azerbaijani society and around the world, and its name comes from the famous 12th-century tower located in the city centre.
The festival involved a broad range of activities, from art exhibitions and discussion sessions to concerts and poetry readings, all of them helping to increase awareness about the importance of the female perspective and the contribution of women to modern society.
As the festival’s academic partner, Ca’ Foscari contributed to the offerings thanks to the participation of Prof. Sara De Vido, an expert of international law and human rights law with a specific focus on the study of women’s rights and violence against women. Prof. De Vido led a master class on human rights for faculty and students of ADA University focused on “Gender Equality in the EU: Evolution and Future Perspectives” and participated in a conference held at the Yarat Contemporary Art Space in Baku by recounting about her experience in fostering gender equality in an academic context.
Building bridges connecting societies: the Italian-Azerbaijani Forum for Dialogue
The Ca' Foscari Short Film Festival 9th edition travels to Baku
From September 26 to 29, 2019, Baku hosted the 9th edition of Ca' Foscari's international Short Film Festival (SFF), which was launched in 2011 as the first European event of its kind organized and managed almost exclusively by university students.
For each edition of the festival, 30 short films created by film school students from all around the world are selected and submitted to a jury that includes prestigious members of the international film scene. On the occasion of the SFF in Baku, the group of films that competed in the festival was expanded to include a selection of short films directed by Azerbaijani film students in order to help give their work an increased visibility.
In this year's festival, a common denominator shared by many of the films was the exploration of various aspects of the physical and psychological dimensions of immigration and emigration.
The presentation of the 9th edition of the SFF in Baku was jointly organized by the Ca' Foscari Baku Office and United Cultures with the support of the EU's Delegation in Azerbaijan, the Embassy of Italy in Baku and the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture. The event was inaugurated by the festival’s general manager and artistic director Maria Roberta Novielli, an associate professor at Ca' Foscari who teaches history of cinema, photography and criticism. During her stay in Baku, Prof. Novielli also gave valuable insight into the organization and significance of the SFF by giving a master class on filmmaking to a group of Azerbaijani students from the University of Art & Cultures.
The festival's opening ceremony and sessions were attended by many representatives of the city's international community, including H. E. Augusto Massari, Ambassador of Italy to Azerbaijan, and Ambassador Kestutis Jankauskas, head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan.
Fostering academic cooperation
Ongoing partnerships and collaborations
Partnership with ADA University
In November 2018, Ca’ Foscari signed an agreement of academic cooperation and exchange with one of Azerbaijan’s most important higher education institutions, ADA University. The collaboration of these institutions is strategic due to the commonalities in their respective research interests and study offers.
To launch this new partnership, Ca’ Foscari’s Vice Rector, Prof. Tiziana Lippiello, gave a lecture on 2 November 2018 at ADA University entitled Following in Marco Polo’s Footsteps: New Projects for the Valorization of the Cultural Heritage of the Silk Roads. The talk also served as an academic contribution to the 2018 Fantazia Festival, which was organized by the European Union’s delegation in Azerbaijan in cooperation with the Embassies of EU Member States in order to raise awareness about the importance of preserving cultural heritage in Azerbaijan.
The talk began by reconstructing the great commercial past that connected Venice and the Silk Road and then proceeded to outline what Ca’ Foscari is doing today to continue to reinforce these connections today by reviving Eurasian cultural and commercial relations, particularly with respect to Venice’s relationship to Azerbaijan.
In 2019 the cooperation between Ca’ Foscari and ADA has been further reinforced through the successful proposal of an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project. The project will allow faculty, students and staff exchange between the two institutions from 2020 through 2022.
In addition, Ca' Foscari's participation as an academic partner of some of the cultural events organized in Baku by the Delegation of the European Union to Azerbaijan has brought about additional moments of knowledge exchange, including Ca’ Foscari professor Sara De Vido’s master class at ADA on international law and gender equality in the EU, which was organized in conjunction with the contemporary art festival “Maiden Tower: To Be a Woman” in September 2019.
Beginning in 2022, the cooperation between Ca’ Foscari and ADA University has been further enriched with the introduction of a Jean Monnet Module funded by the European Union. Dedicated to "Enhancing capacity for EU-Eastern Partnership resilient cooperation within new EaP [Eastern Partnership] beyond 2020", the module was developed under the academic coordination of Prof. Anar Valiyev and Prof. Carlo Frappi. With a three-year duration, it is structured in Summer and Winter Schools designed to deepen participants’ understanding of EU decision-making and EU Foreign Policy & External Relations as well as to introduce them to the aims and principles of the European Neighbourhood Policy in its Eastern dimension and to the future of the EU’s partnership with Azerbaijan as an EaP country.
Participation in the Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo (Italian Language Week)
Within the framework of the Italian government’s most ambitious initiative dedicated to the worldwide promotion of the Italian language – the international Italian Language Week – Ca’ Foscari presented a seminar entitled “The Worldwide Web and Italian: strategies and resources for the global diffusion of the Italian language.” The report that emerged from the Azerbaijan University of Languages in Baku examined the governing and academic institutions’ consciousness of having to present themselves globally in a strategic and targeted manner by communicating degree offerings that respond to students’ needs in an immediate and accessible manner. In this scenario, for both academic and non-academic institutions, both virtual and physical networks are essential instruments in the promotion and enhancement of proper training in a systematic manner. Based on this premise, Ca’ Foscari has taken into consideration its responsibility to adopt and exploit digital tools. With respect to its geopolitical priorities of development, Ca’ Foscari has been capable of putting new educational and career opportunities online in order to attract high-achieving international students. The centrality of the student in the learning of disciplinary content, the experience of sharing and the dialogue regarding human resources all took shape thanks to the fostering of an inclusive teaching environment and a multimedia and innovative approach that has proven to be effective in the teaching and acquisition of languages, including Italian.
Recent special activities
Master classes in archaeology at Ganja State University
Within the framework of a joint ERASMUS+ project (KA1), Ca’ Foscari professor Elena Rova, a specialist in Near Eastern Archaeology and Art History, travelled to Azerbaijan to give master classes in her field at Ganja State University (GSU) from 15 to 25 January 2019. The University Press and Public Relations Service reports that about 20 professors and teachers of the history and geography faculty of GSU took part in the lessons thanks to the European Commission’s financial support, and the participants learned about the results of archaeological excavations and research conducted in the South Caucasus.
During the training she offered, Prof. Rova shared important information about her own archaeological digs and facilitated discussion. At the end of the training the participants were awarded an international certificate.
These master classes constitute the first step in a more far-reaching institutional collaboration that will offer internship experiences for both professors and students from Ganja State University at Ca’ Foscari. Students and teachers in humanities fields (specifically history, geography and modern languages) who would like to study or further their knowledge and research in Venice will fill out an application in order to facilitate the selection of participants.
During her visit to Azerbaijan, Prof. Rova also travelled to Baku to meet with Maisa Ragimova, the director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, and professors from Khazar University in order to discuss the development of archaeological initiatives in Azerbaijan.
Creating opportunities for students
Challenge School internships
Since 2018 the professional master’s programme in the Economics and Languages of Eastern Europe (ELEO) offered by Ca’ Foscari’s Challenge School has been arranging for students to carry out an internship at the Ca’ Foscari Baku Office each summer. The opportunity for these students to gain professional experience in this context is strategic, for the ELEO programme trains professionals in political and economic relations between Italy, Russia and other Eurasian countries, such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
The ELEO interns spend a two-month period at the Ca’ Foscari Baku Office working with United Cultures and its communication company, 124 Studios, with a focus on promoting Ca’ Foscari’s brand and study offer in Azerbaijan. They also assist with communication activities (local media and social networks) and with event planning and organization. To conclude their experience, the students prepare a thesis that addresses one or more aspects of the work experience they acquired during their internship with the goal of proposing concrete ways of further developing the potential of the Ca’ Foscari Baku Office as a conduit for contact between the university and the professional world of Azerbaijan and other Eurasian nations.
Read more about the Ca’ Foscari Challenge School and its professional master’s programmes.
I PICTURE internships
Since the 2018/19 academic year, Azerbaijan has been among the destinations of the Ca’ Foscari University I PICTURE project (Internships to Promote Italian culture to Usefully Raise Employability), an initiative that aims to promote the “Made in Italy” brand outside of Europe. I PICTURE internships therefore have to deal with the promotion of Italian culture in different working areas, such as teaching Italian as a foreign language, business relations with Italian companies, the organization of cross-cultural events, tourist services and so on.
The I PICTURE intern spends a two-month period at the Ca’ Foscari Baku Office and focuses on the promotion of Ca’ Foscari’s educational offer in Azerbaijan. Aactivities include facilitating contact between Ca’ Foscari and academic interlocutors at Baku universities, supporting Ca’ Foscari’s international branding strategies in Azerbaijan and assisting with institutional communication and event organization.
Desks in the World internships
The Ca’ Foscari Desk in the World project offers students the possibility to engage in the promotion of university activities around the globe in order to build a bridge between Ca’ Foscari and local realities abroad, especially with the goal of expanding the university’s network of professional partners in order to create more opportunities for international internships. The Ca’ Foscari Desk in the World project thus leads its interns to develop a rich understanding of the socio-economic dynamics of the country in which the internship is carried out.
In 2019, an Azerbaijani student enrolled at Ca’ Foscari took part in the project and carried out an internship at ITAZERCOM, the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Baku. This was a wonderful opportunity for the student, for he has always been interested in helping to forge connections between Baku, the city in which he was born, and Venice, the city in which he has spent the last two years studying. In pursuit of the internship’s goals, the student focused on identifying local contexts and businesses with which Ca’ Foscari could sign student internship contracts.
Read more about the Desks in the World project.