New Courses 2025/26
General Modules in History
Migrations in World History
Instructor: Niccolò Pianciola
The history of the world over the last five hundred years has been shaped by migratory flows over different distances, connecting all continents. The course will provide students with an overview of the evolution of these migrations, focusing on some key concepts and themes to understand migrations in the past and present. We will discuss, among other things, on the distinction between forced migrations and voluntary ones, and the grey area between the two; how migrants navigate different identity regimes as they move from one political and cultural context to another; how the history of migration is intertwined with that of the evolution of the concept and attributes of citizenship, and with that of the forms of labour, from slavery to free wage labour; how the global history of colonialism and decolonisation has shaped specific forms of migration; and how state borders operate as migratory filters.
Ideas and Cultures in Motion
Instructor: Lucio Biasiori
In this course students embark on a journey through the complex history of the Inquisition, from its medieval origins to the 18th century. Students will examine how the Medieval Inquisition targeted heretical movements, and how the Roman Inquisition emerged as a response to the Protestant Reformation. The course will also cover the expansion of inquisitorial practices across the Iberian empires in Asia and Latin America, which were crucial for the emergence of modern racism. Special focus will be given to the Inquisition’s role in shaping gender norms and sexuality. The course analyzes the persecution of alleged witches, and the repression of ‘sexual deviancy’, including homosexuality. These aspects reveal how the Inquisition enforced and constructed religious, social, moral, and gender norms of its time. By studying this controversial institution, students will gain insights into the interplay of religion, politics, and social control, and understand how these historical processes continue to influence modern debates on gender, sexuality, and authority
Communication and Media in History
Instructors: Federico Mazzini and Alessio Petrizzo
The first part of the course will focus on the history of electronic communication, from the telegraph to the web, passing through the radio, the telephone and the early Internet. We will focus on the “interpretative flexibility” phases of these technologies, looking in particular at how users and their communities influenced the evolution of communication and technological practices and at how electronic communication changed the media landscape.
The second part of the course investigates the origins and transformations of the relationships between visual culture and modern mass media, from the late 18th century to the present. Today, images are an indispensable tool in public communication. They shape our world and influence our experience. But this has not always been the case. We will focus in particular on the political uses and impact of visual media such as prints, illustrated newspapers and magazines, posters, photography, and cinema.
History of Tourism
Instructors: Enrico Valseriati
The course explores the history of modern tourism from the 1840s to the second half of the 20th century, focusing on key developments such as transportation, the rise of mass tourism, and global travel patterns. Taking an intersectional approach, we will work with both secondary literature and diverse primary sources to analyse how tourism shaped, and was shaped by, the experiences of tourists and local communities, government policies, and technological innovation. Through active engagement and varied assessments, students will practice their skills in historical analysis, academic writing, and presentations.
Socio-cultural and geographical disciplines
Museums, Collections, Heritage
Instructor: Elena Canadelli
This course explores mobility as a defining characteristic in the life and history of objects. We follow different things through their uses, itineraries, trajectories and circulations in space and time. Key terms from museum studies and material culture – such as origin, provenance, collection and heritage – are addressed in the light of the so-called mobility turn. Students will be asked to be active learners through a variety of object-based activities and visits to museums throughout the course.
Politics and Institutions on the Move
Instructor: Giovanni Florio
The course aims to provide students with a critical understanding of past and present political institutions from a global perspective. Students will explore key concepts related to politics and institutions, examining their trajectories across time, space, and disciplines. At the end of the course, students will be able to adopt these notions diachronically, applying them to different geo-political contexts, from a comparative perspective.
Demography and Migration
Instructors: Irene Barbiera
The course will be dedicated to the study of different migration dynamics and their demographic, social and economic effects both on origin and destination populations. Students will process first-hand data on migration in different countries around the world, which will then be interpreted in the context of the different theories of migration. Through the discussion of the different interpretative theories, the analysis of data and of different case studies, students will be confronted with the complex mechanisms that determine different migratory phenomena in the past and the present. The ability to critically analyse sources and data useful for understanding and interpreting past and present migratory phenomena in a global and interdisciplinary perspective will also be developed.
Transport History
Instructor: Bruno Sebastian Perez Almansi
The course provides students with a theoretical and historical framework for understanding the cultural, economic, and social dimensions of human transport, industries, and mobilities from a long-term perspective. Students explore the history of industrial systems that underpin transport and examine diverse perspectives on mobility.
Work, Migration and Globalization
Instructor: Francesca Alice Vianello
This course explores the relationship between labour regimes and migration regimes under a global perspective. The construction of a comprehensive theoretical framework to analyse this relationship involves the exploration of theories of migration, labour processes, social reproduction and globalisation. The acquisition of this theoretical lens will enable students to analyse various migration phenomena on a global level, which will be discussed in class through the reading of scientific articles.
Space, Place and Mobility
Instructor: Chiara Rabbiosi
This course explores mobility as an empirical reality and an analytic paradigm from a human-geographic perspective. In 2025/26 the course will focus on food and mobilities, mainly through three major themes: the circulation of food as commodity, food and migrations, food justice and social movements. The course is built around flipped classrooms, ongoing activities, group work, and a final multimedia exhibition—so get ready to be both scientifically rigorous and socially creative!
Urban Mobilities
Instructor: Laura Lo Presti and Giuseppe Tomasella
This course explores how urban movement – from walking and migration to protests and micro-mobilities – shapes and unsettles the spaces we inhabit. Interpret the cities through the lens of cultural geography, literary urban studies and mobility studies. Experiment with creative cartographies: sensory mapping, critical guides, counter-mapping, engaging in fieldwork that transforms streets into maps and maps into narratives. Hands-on seminars with experts in urban mobility and narrative cartography.
Sociology of Ideas and Intellectuals
Instructors: Matteo Bortolini
How are cognitive, expressive, and evaluative ideas created, produced, diffused, and received? Through a close examination of pieces of historical and empirical research, the course introduces a number of basic sociological concepts for the study of ideas and intellectuals, and discusses descriptive, interpretive, and explicative research strategies
Cultural Encounters
Instructor: Maria Teresa Milicia
This course examines the entwined histories of European explorations and the exploitation of Indigenous peoples during the colonial period. Focusing on the cultural and colonial encounters that led to the loss of Indigenous heritage, it details the mobility circuits of Indigenous Ancestral remains from colonial collection sites to global distribution networks and ultimately, to repatriation. Topics include the political economy of human remains, treatment of bodies in rituals versus scientific practices, ethical debates on public display, and repatriation movements. A special focus is given to the symbolic values of restitution in decolonization efforts.
Theory and Methods
Archives and Libraries on the Move
Instructor: Paola Molino
Students will be introduced to libraries and archives from 1500 onwards, in the framework of the history of written cultures worldwide. They will become familiar with concepts and definitions related to libraries and archives history, and with different means of mobility of papers and people that are related to these two institutions, including loans, thefts, travel, colonial and war requisitions, circulation of catalogues. At the end of the seminar they will be able to provide a historical grounded definition of what libraries and archives have been in the past and how they can be thought and re-imagined in the future. They will be able to critically read primary sources related to the mobility of the book and written documents and will be introduced to some basic theories and practices of cataloguing through time and space, useful for possible future internships.
Big Data and Social Network Analysis
Instructor: Daniel Zilio
This course is an introduction to basic Digital Humanities tools and methods necessary for successful work in Mobility Studies, and in humanities on a larger scale. Students will understand how information can be defined, represented, and manipulated in data structures. They will also understand how computational methods are used with data, using specific tools or directly with basic programming in Python. Sentiment analysis, topic modelling, SNA, and other digital methods and techniques will be presented, using datasets relevant to the specific context of Mobility Studies.
Literature, Law and Social Sciences
Texts on the move
Instructor: Ottavia Mazzon
The “Texts on the Move” seminar explores how mobility is an intrinsic feature of texts starting from the idea that texts live in a permanent condition of displacement: they are mobile as they are subject to change while they move through time, space, and social contexts, but they also have a mobilizing power, able as they are to transform the realities they come into contact with. The seminar introduces students to the processes of textual mobility through the lens of the history of ancient Greek and Roman texts from Antiquity to their contemporary reception. It provides the theoretical framework for the study of textual mobility, notions of material philology and book history, and ends with a collaborative analysis of a case-study in the reception of a story from ancient Greek mythology.
Digital Philology
Instructor: Giovanna Todaro and Francesca Benvenuti
The course will focus on Digital Philology through its application to classical texts. Students will discover how Greek and Latin texts have been transmitted over the centuries and how they can be reconstructed through the application of philological methods. Alongside the principles of textual criticism, students will engage with the possibilities offered by digital tools and will be guided step by step in the creation of a digital scholarly edition of a classical text. The aim of the course is to provide students with the ability to merge philological expertise with digital methods, combining scholarly tradition with the potential of innovative tools.
Global Economy in historical perspective
Instructor: Lorenzo Mechi
The course will treat the following topics: cooperation and security in 19th century Europe, namely the Age of Congresses and the “concert of Europe”; subsequently, the “first globalisation” and its consequences, including transnational political movements, public international unions, juridical cooperation, and the “Hague system”; then, the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations system; further, the rise and fall of “collective security” and the political action of the League in the inter-war years. In addition, the course will address the successes and limits of international socio-economic cooperation during the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the ILO, the economic commissions of the League of Nations, and other experiences of economic cooperation. It will also consider the “internationalist” perspectives during WWII and the creation of the United Nations, as well as the UN system, its specialised agencies, and the Bretton Woods organisations. Moreover, attention will be given to the UN and security issues in the Cold War years, the impact of decolonisation and the new focus on development issues, and the international economic organisation from the “golden age” to the “second globalisation.” Finally, the course will conclude with hints on the evolution and problems of the UN system after the Cold War.
European and global citizenship
Instructor: Guido Gorgoni
The purpose of the course is to provide students with an understanding of the profound changes of the concept of citizenship, particularly in the European context.
By the end of the class, successful students will be able to a) identify the main developments of the European Citizenship in the context of the EC and of the EU; c) to distinguish the fundamental rights that constitute the content of European citizenship and their judicial protection; d) to understand the transformation of the concept of citizenship in the post-national context. […]
Gender EU politics and globalization
Instructor: Lorenza Perini
The aim of the course is to make the students aware that the impact of the process of policy- making, in all the possible fields of social and political life, can be intersectionally and this different impact can hide discrimination and imbalance. […]
English as a Global Language
Instructor: Elena Borsetto
The goal of the course entitled English as a Global Language is to explore the dynamics that have made English a global language. Take a detour along the many Englishes and discover their different identities.
The classroom brings real-world experiences, creativity and fosters a dynamic academic environment where students are not only exposed to different kinds of accents, pronunciations, stereotypes, beliefs and behaviours, but they are also encouraged to think broadly, historically, and critically about what drives a language to spread, affirm itself and influence the way people think of it.
Laboratories
Narratives and Textuality
Instructor: Francesco Veronese
The course will focus on a well-known epic poem composed in the Anglo-Saxon world during the Early Middle Ages, namely, Beowulf. The text will be studied from the perspective of both its exterior features, that is, its shape, style, narrative and lexical solutions, and manuscript transmission; and of its contents. Then the multiple shapes taken by this poem through time will be taken into account. Its most recent reformulations, developed in the context of media that were developed in the last century or so (movies, graphic novels, video games, etc.), will be the object of a specific focus. The shapes and ways of production and circulation of all these narratives will be investigated in order to understand how and why this text has been so frequently chosen to address specific messages to different categories of audience.
Public Digital History
Instructor: Enrico Valsierati
In this module students learn the fundamentals of public history. By the end of this workshop, students will be able to write, record, and edit audio content and will know how to work with the main equipment and software tools available in recording studios to create a history podcast for outreach purposes. They will also learn the fundamentals of public history and digital history. Students will be expected to strengthen their competences in the following areas: reference/research skills (finding and using primary and secondary sources), content creation (podcasts and social media), recording and editing audio files, working effectively both alone and as part of a group, clarity of exposition, providing effective feedback to others.
Data Visualization
Instructor: Marco Orlandi
The laboratory aims to provide an overview of the main techniques and methodologies for the graphical representation of information.
Students will be able to deal with one or more case studies through practical exercises.
Economic globalization and human rights
Instructor: Roberto Antonietti
At the end of the course, students will be able to find and interpret data and statistics concerning the globalization of production and the main human development indicators.
In addition, students should acquire the capabilities for a critical evaluation of the socio-economic impact of production globalization processes, with a focus on multinationals, foreign direct investments, and offshoring strategies.. […]
Digital Cultural Heritage
Instructor: Elena Rizzi
The workshop aims to introduce students to Digital Cultural Heritage by working with museum digital collections and projects. How have digital technologies transformed museum core activities? Does the digitization of museum collections help mediate the physical artefacts and the narratives they embody to various publics? Students will learn to use museum digital collections for research, to evaluate museum digital projects, to employ digital tools to design digital exhibits, to assess the political dimension of museum digital projects.
