Italy

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course advances students' understanding of structural behavior and enhances their ability to apply structural analysis methods to civil engineering structures. Students acquire knowledge in the following areas: Structural Matrix Analysis, i.e., techniques for analyzing 2D truss and frame structures using the Direct Stiffness Method and FEM software. Buckling Analysis, i.e., methods for buckling and post-buckling analysis of discrete and continuous systems, with FEM applications. Plastic Analysis, i.e., concepts of plasticity, incremental and limit analysis for truss and beam systems, also using FEM tools. The main skills developed during this course include: Proficiency in matrix analysis and the Finite Element Method (FEM) for analyzing truss and frame structures. Ability to evaluate buckling and post-buckling behavior of rigid and continuous systems, using equilibrium and energy methods. Competence in conducting plastic analysis of structural systems, including an understanding of plastic hinges. Software Proficiency: hands-on experience with FEM-based software for solving structural, buckling, and elasto-plastic problems. Analytical and critical thinking: enhanced ability to approach complex structural issues with theoretical and computational tools. The course contributes to the objectives of the master’s program related to the application of mathematical tools for interpreting, describing, and modeling structural problems.

A prior knowledge and understanding of the static behavior of planar truss and beam structures is recommended. The course includes theoretical lectures (module 1), exercises and laboratory sessions (module 2). 

This course teaches students an understanding of human rights as embedded in specific historical circumstances, and looks at their codification in international law as the product of heated political debates and struggles. In order to do so, it articulates itself in three interlocking learning units. The 1st unit is historical: it traces the genealogy of the concept and focuses on the birth of the “human rights regime.” Unit 2 looks at specific cases and rights, and Unit 3 examines critical readings of human rights as an instrument for “Western hegemony,” or as inadequate in other ways. The course covers the historical development of human rights, civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights, the right to health, women's rights, intervention, LGBTQ rights, and critiques of human rights. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The objectives include: Critical Analysis: Train students to critically analyze how culture and social structures both shape and are shaped by the physical environment. Spatial Awareness: Help students understand the spatial dimensions of social phenomena, exploring how territories impact social interactions and cultural expressions. Cultural Appreciation: Foster an appreciation for cultural diversity by examining how different cultures manifest within specific territories, and how cultural practices are influenced by geographic locations. Research Skills: Develop research skills by teaching students how to investigate and analyze the relationships between social structures, culture, and territory through empirical studies and literature reviews. Globalization Impact: Explore the effects of globalization on local cultures and identities. Emphasize how global forces interact with and sometimes challenge local customs and territorial boundaries, fostering critical thinking. 

This course focuses specifically on the spatial and cultural dimensions of contemporary life. It begins by exploring the historical development of the discipline and its intersections with other social sciences, then moves toward a more focused examination of how territory and culture interact within the context of consumer society. Particular attention is devoted to understanding how consumption shapes and is shaped by both physical and digital environments. Consumer culture is not approached merely as an economic phenomenon, but as a complex system of practices and meanings that contribute to the production of social identities, symbolic landscapes, and territorial imaginaries. From shopping malls and theme parks to social media platforms and algorithmically curated spaces, students investigate how consumption environments function as sites of cultural production and negotiation. Throughout the course, students engage with theoretical perspectives and empirical case studies that highlight the interplay between material culture, globalization, prosumption, and the hybridization of space. The physical and the digital are not treated as separate spheres, but as interconnected and co-constructed domains that define how individuals navigate, appropriate, and give meaning to their social worlds. By combining lectures, seminar discussions, and multimedia materials, the course fosters a critical understanding of how contemporary spatial practices reflect broader cultural transformations. In doing so, it encourages students to reflect on the ways in which space and culture co-evolve in the context of late modernity, shaping both inclusion and exclusion, identity and belonging.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. By the end of the course students show acquaintance with the main trends of archaeological thought, from the earliest days to recent times. They are familiar with important theoretical areas of contemporary archaeology, including processual and post-processual archaeology, the archaeology of identity and gender, and the relationships between archaeology, history, and politics. They know about central themes such as the evolution of strategies and methods of field research (excavation and survey), the representation and communication of archaeological data. The skills acquired enable students to study different types of archaeological contexts starting from solid theoretical and methodological bases, equipping them to address the planning of field research and interpretation of collected data. Students are also be able to conceive different forms of presentation and communication of archaeological data, based on an in-depth knowledge of the many options existing in this field.

This course explores the main practical and theoretical issues in the field of archaeology. The course starts with a brief history of the discipline, followed by the analysis of some of the most relevant fieldwork case studies (i.e. excavations, surveys and other kinds of archaeological investigations). By the end of the course, students are able to tackle archaeological data from a critical point of view, as much as to understand the theoretical bases which lay behind other scholars' fieldwork.

The course investigates how the cultural and creative industries (CCI) work and their capacity to generate economic value for all the stakeholders involved in conceiving, financing, producing, valorizing, releasing, and preserving the cultural goods. The analysis of the CCI business models and organization is integrated by the analysis of the public policies (at supranational, national, and local level) that regulate and support culture and the companies working in this sector.

The class includes meeting with professionals working in cultural companies or institutions and group work with final presentations during the final lectures. Student groups are asked to develop a crowdfunding campaign for a cultural initiative. At the end of the course, the student: knows the principles that regulate the demand and the supply of culture in the contemporary scenario; knows the mechanisms of private and public financing of culture; and is able to reconstruct the policies of support for cultural activities. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the course, the student: is able to understand the fundamental philosophical issues raised by law and their significance; has knowledge of legal-philosophical conceptions in their historical development, from their origins to contemporary perspectives, and can reconstruct how these conceptions provide answers to these issues; can critically evaluate the theoretical advantages and limitations of the various conceptions; possesses basic notions of legal theory and the theory of legal interpretation. The course consists of two parts:

• The first part (Conceptions of Law) introduces the three main conceptions of legal theory – natural law theory, legal positivism, and legal realism – and discusses their theoretical implications; then, some contemporary trends (law and economics, critical legal studies, and legal feminism) are introduced and discussed, also in connection with the traditional views.
• The second part (Hart: The Concept of Law) discusses in details H. L. A. Hart’s masterpiece “The Concept of Law” and its Postscript, also in the light of some contemporary debates in legal theory that derived from it: particularly the Hart-Dworkin debate, but also the debate on inclusive and exclusive legal positivism (Raz on authority).

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. 

At the end of the course the student understands the health-related behavioral determinants and has an overview of some recent policies aimed at improving the population's lifestyles. He/she has adequate knowledge of: 1) the demand for health and health capital; 2) the behavioral determinants leading to unhealthy outcomes such as obesity and addiction; 3) the trade-offs between health and welfare objectives; 4) the policies aimed at changing health-related behavior and lifestyles. The course combines theoretical analysis and discussion of case-studies on the following topics:

• The demand for health and health capital;
• The behavioral determinants leading to unhealthy outcomes such as obesity and addiction;
• The trade-offs between health and welfare objectives;
• Policies aimed at changing health-related behavior and lifestyles.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. By the end of the course, students are aware of the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of the European colonization of America and of its relationship with the early modern globalization. Students will be able to recognize the active role played by indigenous groups and individuals in the shaping of the emerging global world. At the end of the course, the student is able to contextualize the European conquest of America within a global historical and cultural framework, as well as to independently engage in the critical analysis of historical sources and early modern ethnographic records. The students are also able to deploy such analytical skills to professional activities linked with the popularization and public use of historical and anthropological knowledge. This course examines the cultural processes that unfolded during the European colonization of the Americas and their role in fostering Early Modern globalization. A special attention is devoted to the Mesoamerican cultural area.

Week 1 introduces the course and provides an overview of the European colonization of the Americas. Week 2 examines the impact of the conquest on early modern globalization, focusing on phenomena such as the Columbian Exchange, the international trade of American resources and the transatlantic slave trade. It also introduces Mesoamerica as a cultural area and, more specifically, the Late Postclassic Nahua world. Week 3 describes the Conquest of Mesoamerica and the political and economic structures of New Spain. One session this week is dedicated to a collective discussion of selected articles and book chapters provided by the instructor. Week 4 addresses the so‑called "spiritual conquest", the emergence of mestizaje across social and cultural domains, and the epistemological dimensions of colonialism, which at the same time extracts and downplays local indigenous knowledge. Week 5 considers the role of missionary‑ethnographers like Bernardino de Sahagún, the colonial origins of anthropological practices, and early modern conceptions of human difference as a formative stage in the development of racism and coloniality. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course focuses on the new digital techniques to investigate, document, analyze, and publicize monuments, sites, and archaeological landscapes. Students learn how to use GIS and Web-GIS systems, integrating information sources and mapping techniques. They will appreciate the value of the systematization and computerized management of archaeological data, databases, and interpreted restitution. They study the potential of digital applications for archaeological research, toward a three-dimensional documentation of contexts, serving also for dissemination purposes and public use. Students use digital techniques and tools appropriately in archaeology and are able to choose the most correct approach in relation to the case study or archaeological goal. The course discusses relevant aspects of digital archaeology, i.e., archaeological research conducted through methodologies and technologies derived from the digital revolution, with a critical perspective entrusted from time to time to the analysis of the most up-to-date scientific work.

In the first part of the course, the main basic elements of digital archaeology are discussed:

• Data in Archaeology: the archaeological record.
• Dealing with attribute data: the Database.
• Spatial data acquisition: survey in archaeology.
• Digital maps and the concept of scale.
• GIS

In the second part, some of the areas in which the elements discussed in the first part make a decisive contribution to the creation of new knowledge are presented through case studies based on the most recent scientific literature or currently ongoing projects:

• GIS between the Landscape and the Intra-site level
• GIS and Legacy Data Management
• 2D, 2.5D, 3D, 4D: the many dimensions of digital data
• Digital publication: WebGIS, multimedia publications of large excavation contexts
• Open Data, Big Data, FAIR Data
• Virtual Reality, immersive archaeology, gamification
• Reflexive archaeology

At the end of the course, the student possesses in-depth knowledge of the molecular mechanisms underlying genome editing methodologies in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells and the main applications in biotechnology. In particular, the student is able to: 1) analyze and discuss topics concerning the basic mechanisms and applications of these methodologies; 2) understand and critically analyze the biomolecular literature.

This course covers: basic concepts concerning nucleic acids in the cell; chemical structure of nucleic acids; physical structures of DNA and RNA molecules; genetic code, genes and genomes; physical structure of genetic material: bacterial chromosomes (chromatin), eukaryotic chromatin, higher order chromatin structures; DNA recombination; the biological role of homologous recombination; molecular mechanisms of homologous recombination in bacterial cells and in eukaryotic cells; non-homologous recombination; site-specific recombination; mechanisms of DNA repair; types of DNA lesions; pathways and mechanisms of DNA repair: DNA photolyase, Nucleotide Excision Repair, Base Excision Repair, Mismatch Repair; repair mechanisms of DNA double-strand breaks: Nonhomologous end-joining and homologous recombination repair; conventional approaches used for genome-editing: homologous recombination, chemical methods and approaches based on homing endonucleases; genome-editing approaches based on modern methodologies using sequence-specific all-protein nucleases: mega-nucleases, zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) and Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs); and genome-editing approaches based on methodologies using RNA-guided nucleases: Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR-CAS systems).

The course includes an individual laboratory activity where the CRISPR-Cas9 system is used to specifically target and cleave a gene sequence of interest. The aim is to evaluate how introduced mutations affect target recognition and cleavage efficiency by the endonuclease.