Marie Curie Fellows - 2019 Call

VegSciLif - The Emergence of a Science of Vegetation in Early Modern Natural Philosophy and the Sciences of Life: from Cesalpino to Malpighi

This three-year research project aims to explore the emergence of a philosophy and science of plants in the century that goes from author Cesalpino’s “De plantis” (1583) to Malpighi’s “Anatome plantarum” (1679), which influenced the development of a new science of life that brigded historical natural efforts of classification and natural philosophical investigations. While new scholarly attention has been recently devoted to the philosophical study of plants in the early modern period, the result of this research project will be a broad investigation into the concept of vegetation and vegetal life that paved the way to eighteenth century morphologies and systems of nature. Fabrizio Baldassarri will research at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, under the supervision of prof. Domenico Bertoloni Meli, and at Bloomington Indiana University.

MAREA - MAtchmaking Restoration, Ecology and Aquaculture

Bivalve aquaculture is considered to be one of the most sustainable, although some potentially negative environmental impacts arising from high deposition rates of faces and pseudofaces on the seabed have been identified. Habitat restoration management can be integrated within aquaculture practices to limit their negative impacts and it can bring positive environmental changes while obtaining both economical and cultural returns. This project aims to integrate restoration with aquaculture, namely the reintroduction of native flat Oyster reefs under mussels culture sites and harvest oyster spat recruiting as seeds in the original farm area to obtain economical returns and start a local oyster farming chain, while leaving the reef intact to provide ecosystem services. This will be done combining modelling and experimental approaches, with a pilot site in the Adriatic sea. Climate change scenarios will be applied to identify the potential of this approach over the long term. Dr Bertolini will work at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics of Ca' Foscari with prof. Roberto Pastres.

MapAeg - Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber insularum (15^th c.) and the Origins of Classical Archaeology

MapAeg aims at the study of the “Liber Insularum Archipelagi” (1420) by the Florentine Cristoforo Buondelmonti: it is the first example of ‘isolarium’ (book of islands) and a fundamental text for the rediscovery of ancient Greece and the birth of classical archaeology. It is also an important document of the geopolitical situation of the Aegean and its islands during the years immediately before the fall of Constantinople. A digital humanities component will be implemented in collaboration with Stanford University, where Benedetta Bessi will spend the first two years, coming then to the Department of Humanities of Ca’ Foscari under the supervision of prof. Antonio Rigo.

Shades of Black - The Darker Shades of Black. The Value of Skin Colour in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Slave and Labour Markets, 1750-1886

The projects aims to examine how the skin colour of captives, slaves, serfs, workers on galleys and sex workers affected their value in economic transactions before and after the legal abolition of slavery in the period 1750-1886. The hypothesis is that skin colour and shades thereof were a major factor in influencing both the slaves’ exchange value and the salary level of free workers. The research will compare case studies, for the Mediterranean, in the Italian area, France and Spain, and for the Atlantic in Cuba and the French Antilles. Giulia Bonazza will research at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies of Ca’ Foscari (supervisor: prof. Petri Rolf) and at the Columbia University.

BeCAMP - Beyond the camp: border regimes, enduring liminality and everyday geopolitics in Italy and Spain

The project is conceived as an anthropological approach to the second reception system for asylum seekers in two European countries of first arrival. The focus will be put on how the migrants’ reception system and the multiple devices of control and management of asylum seekers and illegalized migrants, on the one hand, and the daily coping strategies of these subjects living inside or at the edges of such system, on the other, shift accordingly to the variations of politics and policies. The starting hypothesis is that the border, far from being a mere dividing line, is in reality a much more complex and broader entity, which begins well before and ends long after the border in the strict sense, and which follows the migrant over time in the form of welfare systems, bureaucracy etc. Borelli will spend the first two years of the project at the New School of Social Research in New York, and the third year at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of the Ca' Foscari University, under the supervision of Prof. Fabio Perocco.

SPECTACLE - The lure of the foreign stage: Italian art and artistry serving the French and European spectacle 

Spectacle is a multidisciplinary investigation in histories of culture, art, stage design, theatre, and community networks at the end of the eighteenth century. It focuses on the activity of Italian artists and artisans (stage designers, circus performers, and firework makers) that contributed to the creation of spectacle across Europe. The project aims to define the cultural meaning of ‘spectacle’ and ‘spectacularity’ at the turn of the nineteenth century. Elisa Cazzato will research at the New York University and at the Department of Linguistics and Cultural Studies of Ca’ Foscari (supervisor: prof. Gerardo Tocchini), in addition to a period at Université Paris-Sorbonne.

REALE: Reassessing Leibniz’s conception of number and the infinite

The aim of the project is to investigate Leibniz’s general conception of number in light of his mereological theory and how this background affected Leibniz’s conception of the infinite, in particular his denial of the existence of an infinite number. In this way, the project will reshape the standard view according to which Leibniz’s rejection of infinite number is simply based on a faulty argument. The project’s ambition is to bring out a Leibnizian foundational theory for mathematics based on mereology, which can offer an alternative theory to the standard set-theoretical one. The research will be carried out at McMaster University (Canada) and at Ca’ Foscari - Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage with prof. Luigi Perissinotto.

MARESIA - Maritime Rescue. International Norm Contestation and Seaborne Migration to Italy and Australia

Between 2013 and 2019, over 15,000 migrants died in the Southern Mediterranean alone. The moral and legal duty to rescue lives at sea, however, is increasingly problematized as a hindrance to effective border control. This research project examines Australia and Italy’s different interpretation and implementation of the maritime rescue norm, its causes and its implications. Eugenio Cusumano will spend part of his research at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari (supervisor: prof. Matteo Legrenzi) and part at the University of Queensland - Australia.

ProMENAd - When States Prohibit: the politics of drugs and ‘addiction’ across the Mediterranean

The project tackles the question of what happens when states prohibit mind-altering drugs. It explores the modern history of drugs, their prohibition and the practice of ‘addiction’ recovery. The Mediterranean region had been left out of the field studies, though it has historically adopted staunch prohibitionist policies. Taking the case of Italy and Lebanon since the ‘psychoactive 1960s’ and the outset of the ‘war on drugs’, the project will analyse drug consumption and the state-society relations in terms of health and security over the last five decades. Maziyar Ghiabi will work at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari with prof. Matteo Legrenzi and at the American University of Beirut - Lebanon.

Parallel Lives - Parallel Lives: Dependency and Backwardness

This project will investigate the relationship between economic development and global trade, by exploring the connection between two alternatives to neoliberalism posed in the second half of the twentieth century: Soviet economic thinking and “dependency theory” (the predominantly Latin American approach that stressed the structural inequality between a rich “core” and a poor “periphery” of countries). The project will look in particular at the debate in the USSR on the idea of “backwardness”, which socialism was supposed to overcome, and its impact on dependency theory in Latin America. It will also investigate the significance of this transnational exchange of ideas for the development of global trade policy through the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Alessandro Iandolo will develop his project at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari under the supervision of prof. Matteo Legrenzi and at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of Harvard University.

FUZZFARM - Modelling of the early agricultural spread in south of the Eastern Europe

The project aims at modelling the early agricultural spread, the process that brought agriculture and the settled way of life to large portions of Europe in VII-V mill. BC. It is focused on the archaeological record of south Eastern Europe (roughly modern south-eastern Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, and eastern Romania). The ecological, economic and social constraints faced by early farmers to select a certain micro-region for colonization will be studied and incorporated into an agent-based fuzzy model, to simulate the process of early agricultural expansion in actual geographic space. Dmytro Kiosak will work at the Department of Asian and North African Studies under the supervision of prof. Paolo Biagi.

Occupational Health - Ill-health, Work and Occupational Health in Early Modern Italy (ca. 1550-1750)

This project investigates the relationship between ill-health and working life in early modern Italy (ca.1550-1750). Italy is a crucial site for analysis as it had a diverse workforce in highly urbanised areas while also being at the forefront of developing public health procedures in Europe, including the regulation of dangerous jobs and growing concerns about the health consequences of working practices. Using methodological approaches from the history of epistemology, the project examines how concerns about work activities were integrated into medical discourse and diagnosis, how workers understood and shared health problems, and how occupational health shaped early modern society. The project is based at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, supervised by prof. Marco Sgarbi.

PROPEL - Prophecy, Public Sphere and Emotions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Tuscany: From Dante to Savonarola

In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, prophetic discourse was one of the most incisive means for proposing or opposing alternative models of political and religious order. A large number of short prophecies circulated at that time throughout the continent, which have never received a thorough analysis. PROPEL will be the first systematic investigation – between material philology, media studies and history of emotions – of the circulation of prophetic texts in Florence and in Tuscany, bearing in mind two key figures as chronological limits: Dante Alighieri (d. 1321) and Girolamo Savonarola (d. 1498). Michele Lodone will work at the Department of Humanities of Ca’ Foscari with Prof. Antonio Montefusco, and at the University of Chicago - US with Prof. Justin Steinberg.

NONORMOPERA - Sexual and Gender Non-Normativity in Opera after the Second World War

Federica Marsico is a musicologist specialised in the study of musical theatre from the perspective of queer musicology. Her project NONORMOPERA aims to shed light on the expressive strategies employed by gay composers to represent sexual and gender non-normativity in some operas of the second half of the twentieth century. By investigating the socio-historical context where the opera was composed, the author’s biography, the libretto and the score, the project will highlight how music can relate experiences of marginalisation and challenge discriminatory prejudices. The research will be carried out during the first two years at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montréal, and during the last year at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari with prof. Michele Girardi.

SSRIME - Sunni-Shii Relations in the Middle East

SSRIME investigates the entangled history of Sunni-Shii sectarianism in the Middle East by looking at the case study of Iraq under the Baath Party (1968-2003). SSRIME thus seeks to explain the root causes of instability in the Middle East, which has fuelled the refugee crisis. Starting from the circumstances that engendered the Sunni-Shii conflict, SSRIME studies the relationship between the Iraqi state and the Shia up to the 2003 Iraq War for sectarianism, thus opening possible similar study approaches to other countries in the region, in particular to Syria under the Baath party. Toby Matthiesen will combine the study of the Baath Party of Iraq archives at Stanford University with oral history studies and fieldwork in Iraq, spending the last year at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari under the supervision of prof. Matteo Legrenzi.

ENNSE - European Networks and the New Sciences in Edinburgh

The project will explore how the intellectual culture of the Venetian Republic and Rome shaped the development of scientific knowledge in 17th-century Britain. It will offer a detailed textual, philosophical, and bibliographical study of a large, unpublished manuscript of lecture notes and commentary on natural philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics, which was the main teaching manual in cosmology and mathematics at Edinburgh at that time. It will trace the epistemic networks that contributed to the transformation of university education in the early-middle 17th century at what would become the centre of Britain's Enlightenment culture. David McOmish will carry out his research at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage with prof. Pietro Omodeo.

ANTIQUITATES - Empirical Knowledge and Antiquarian Architecture in Sixteenth-century Venice

Cesare Pastorino, historian of early modern science and ideas, will study the empirical and experimental practices between sciences and humanities and the patronage networks of architects and antiquarians of the Republic of Venice in the sixteenth century, in figures like Andrea Palladio and Vincenzo Scamozzi. The ultimate purpose of “Antiquitates” is to lay the foundations for a new area of research on the role of quantification, measurement and experimentation in the study of antiquity during the early modern period. Pastorino will work at the University of Princeton with prof. Anthony Grafton and at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari with prof. Marco Sgarbi.

IDENTISS - IDENTIty-Scapes of Sardinia: productivity, burials, and social relationships of AD 100-600 west-central Sardinia

Identity is today a highly debated topic across Europe. Often though, it is spoken about as an immutable tool, acquired with birth, and it has been appropriated by discourses on exclusivity and exclusion. Can archaeology contribute to the discussion with its vertical perspective over time, returning identity to its relational nature? IDENTISS faces this question studying the material traces of the past exposing the complexity and fluidity of identity-scapes through the understanding of human relationships. The project centres on funerary and settlement contexts of Roman-period rural Sardinia. Mauro Puddu will develop his research at the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, under the supervision of prof. Sauro Gelichi, in collaboration with the Museum of Broken Relationships, Zagreb, Croatia.

THREAT - Girolamo Cardano: Philosopher of Threat

The project addresses the deep history of threat and individual agency in managing threat. It asks about antecedent culture wars, with the expectation that a larger perspective will help us to rethink our current categories. In particular, it will examine the corpus of Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), the most widely-read natural philosopher of the time, as well as Roman Inquisition’s documents about him, in order to chart an early-modern transformation of great significance: the shift in the management of threat from spiritual expertise to secular expertise. The individual, by Cardano’s reckoning, lives in a network of danger, from bodily illness and accident, to chance events, to faults of intellect and memory, to the vagaries of human passion. Assisted by tools from the digital-humanities, the project will establish an anatomy of threat in Cardano’s work and examine how the Roman Inquisition’s censorship of Cardano represents a criticism of secular expert approaches to threat. Jonathan Regier will carry his research at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage with prof. Pietro Omodeo.

PlaGE - Playing at the Gateways of Europe: theatrical languages and performatives practices in the Migrants' Reception Centres of the Mediterranean Area

The PlaGE project investigates the use of theatrical languages and performative practices at the core of the Mediterranean migration process, during the transit-phase in the reception centres of Italy and Morocco. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach which combines Performance Studies and Social Studies, the research will map and analyse the emerging presence of cross-cultural performative practices at the thresholds of Europe. The analysis and its experimental application will benefit from a Euro-African perspective, enriched by the strategical collaboration of two universities located at the opposite sides of the Mediterranean Sea. After two years in Morocco, the research will be achieved at Ca’ Foscari, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, supervised by Prof. Fabio Perocco.

INT-NAT  - The Inter-Nationalist

Under the supervision of Professor Matteo Legrenzi, at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Tania Saeed explores the complex nexus between right wing populism in South Asia and the global networks that have contributed to its success, as well as their implications for populism in the Global North. The uniqueness of this project is its focus on South Asian populist networks in the UK and US. The study focuses on the Indian ruling political party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in relation to its international affiliates the Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP), and the Pakistani ruling political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its Office of International Chapters-PTI (OIC-PTI). The project uses mixed methods with the objective to map horizontal and vertical trajectories of these network thereby creating a multidimensional framework, to examine diversity within these groups in relation to gender, religion, ethnicity, caste, class, sect and sexualities, and to explore intergenerational differences through younger members of these groups and members of Indian and Pakistani university student societies. The result will be a study on populist networks between North and South and on the success of these ideologies among minority communities in the North.

EMPHABIOSYS – EMergence of new PHAses in BIOpolymer SYStems

Proteins are the molecular machines of life: Skrbic will study their folding and misfolding dynamics and ultimately the protein-DNA interactions using a highly interdisciplinary approach, which encompasses biology, chemistry, computer science, physics, and mathematics. The starting ingredient of this study is a model for proteins recently developed by Skrbic and her supervisors, to bridge conventional polymer phases and those adopted by biomolecules. This project is directly relevant to tackle the societally important problem of human health: it will be useful for making nifty machines in lab and eventually could form the basis for the creation of artificial life itself. The first two years of the project will be carried out at the University of Oregon, under the guidance of prof. Jayanth Banavar, while the third year will be hosted by the Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems of Ca’ Foscari, under the supervision of prof. Achille Giacometti.

CompSubjInf – Competition between subjunctive and infinitive in the history of German, Balkan Slavic and Romance languages

The project CompSubjInf will study the historical development of the competition between the grammatical categories of the subjunctive and the infinitive across a range of different European languages. We speak of subjunctive-infinitive competition in this context because certain languages have replaced the infinitive with the subjunctive (e.g. Balkan languages), while others underwent the reverse process, replacing the subjunctive with the infinitive (e.g. Germanic languages). The project will track the diachronic stages along which the phenomenon in question developed, as well as propose to account for the underlying grammatical factors that are responsible for it, thus further advancing our understanding of the linguistic mechanisms behind language change in general. Tomislav Sočanac will work at the Ohio State University with prof. Brian Joseph and at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies of Ca’Foscari with prof. Iliyana Krapova.

RE-NUP - Spousal Reunification and Integration Laws in Europe

RE-NUP will study the implementation of integration laws and the deployment of cultural expertise in three European countries through the perspective of spousal visa applicants. The project will focus on the modes through which laws influence and are, in turn, shaped by the divergent ways in which the institution of marriage is defined and practiced in South Asia and Europe. It will be hosted by the Department of Asian and North African Studies, under the supervision of prof. Livia Holden, where the fellow will also contribute to the existing programs on Intercultural Education. Rama Srinivasan will be also affiliated with the Marco Polo Centre for Global Europe-Asia Connections at Ca' Foscari and the Centre for History and Anthropology of Law, University of Paris in secondment.

READESCARTES - Reading Descartes: A Reassessment of the Shaping and Transmission of Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century

The main objective of this project is to provide an assessment of the reception of the thought of the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), by a study of the handwritten sources testifying to the teaching and dissemination of his ideas in Europe. These have been so far studied by looking mostly at printed sources: on the contrary, this project will focus on handwritten commentaries, marginal annotations, and academic lecture notes. Andrea Strazzoni will develop his research at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari under the supervision of prof. Marco Sgarbi.

WeCENT - Weather, Climate and Environmental information for Tourism

WeCENT will build on the latest advances in the exploitation of Earth Observation data to develop and make available climate and environmental information tailored for touristic purposes. The results will lead to development of innovative integrated information addressing tourism actors, by bringing satellite-based information in the day-to-day life. Liliana Velea will carry out her research at the Department of Humanities of Ca’ Foscari with prof. Alessandro Gallo.

MEND - Modelling Energy for Sustainable Development in Ethiopia 

Energy access, as well as its source, type, and mix, are key for economic development. Least developed countries (LDCs), such as Ethiopia, heavily rely on traditional biomass energy sources, in particular for cooking fuel. In fact, although electricity constitutes a potential export item (in Ethiopia about 95% of electricity comes from hydro-power), a significant amount of import spending goes on petroleum products. The consequence is non-negligible indoor air pollution that causes more than 50,000 deaths annually and nearly 5% of the burden of disease in the country. This research project intends to fill the gap in the existing literature on energy transition in Ethiopia and the interaction among energy sources, the economy and the environment in LDCs. Amsalu Woldie Yalew will be hosted by the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics and the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, supervised by prof. Carlo Carraro.