Italy

This is an advanced level art studio course for students with prior experience. The course develops an understanding of the defining features and structural elements of fine art graphics in many forms, while teaching engraving and printing techniques both theoretically and practically. Course contents include: familiarizing with studio spaces, safety regulations, and respectful conduct; introducing the concept of original fine art print and distinguishing among intaglio, woodcut, lithography, and screen printing; analyzing original prints and reproductions to study the graphic work of professional artists and to understand the different engraving techniques and their opportunities for expression; using equipment and tools; graphic design and project development; differences between direct and indirect intaglio techniques; preparing printing plates; methods to transfer drawings; etching techniques for coverage and additions, soft ground (line and impression), drypoint, and aquatint; understanding etching times; inking, cleaning, and printing methods; paper soaking and drying; constructing a register; cleaning and preservation of plates. 

More experienced students in the course also experiment with new techniques. Students develop personal projects, with particular attention to the formal and compositional aspects and to the modulation of the sign. Students are guided, throughout their artistic research, to understand the close relationship between content and sign. Teaching methods include: theoretical lessons and collective and individual practical demonstrations; individual discussions on current projects. A classroom platform is available for general communication. Educational outings, exhibitions, and participation in workshops may be proposed.

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 course provides a broad view of the major economic, organizational, and governance-related features of several artistic, cultural, and entertainment activities in creative industries. At the end of the course, the student is able to analyze the business model of organizations operating in the cultural and creative industries.

Upon completion of the course, students are able to: Define the distinctive features of organizations operating in the creative industries; Illustrate how these organizations can be financially viable; Apply analytical, planning and control tools such as the business model canvas and revenues and costs analysis; Analyze and critically evaluate the business model and governance solution of an organization operating in the creative industries; Develop and improve presentation skills, both in written and oral form. The course is organized around four themes: Defining creative industries, defining business models and the Business model canvas, understanding better the Costs and Revenues components of the business model canvas, and governance and business model in the creative industries.

At the end of the course, the student can analyze structural and dynamic aspects of populations. Particularly, the student is able: to measure population size, variation and distribution in time and space; to measure and analyze population structural characteristics; and to measure and analyze demographic dynamics components.

Course contents include: Population studies; sources of demographic data; population composition and variation; relations between demographic dynamics and structures; elements of demographic analysis: crude and age-specific rates, standardization methods; age, period and cohort; Lexis diagram, managing data and processes on the diagram; period and cohort analysis; life tables and life tables conceived as a stationary population; mortality by cause; fertility and reproduction measures; the demographic transition and forecasts (elements); and migration in population analysis.

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 is an applied course on international development economics, organized around a few selected topics. The course offers the theoretical and analytical tools is to understand the different interpretations of social and economic development - in its evolving features - both at the country and at the international level. With the objective of providing the basic context for correctly framing the Sustainable Development Goals, the course focuses on issues such as poverty, hunger, inequality, migration, and unbalanced development. The experience of the so-called emerging countries is one of the points of view. Students acquire the ability to tackle the problems of economic development and competition in an applied and comparative perspective, with thematic in-depth applications.

This is an advanced and critical course on issues of international development in light of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The course covers the following topics, analyzing and comparing different positions: Poverty definitions and measures; Poverty statistical evidence; Economic inequality definitions and measures; The Kuznets curve relationship between income growth and inequality; The debate after Kuznets; World inequality recent trends; Inequality in income and wealth in the long run; World inequality recent trends; Climate change and development: who and what is causing it, climate change inequality; Assessing the consequences of climate change; How has the world economic order changed in the last two centuries; Where is the world heading: globalization and the current international economic order; International relations, the economic order and the new geography of world economic power.

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 has a clear understanding of the main problems of contemporary epistemology and a detailed knowledge of some of the views that shape current debates on the structure of epistemic justification, the skeptical paradoxes and the interplay between evidential and pragmatic factors in ascriptions of knowledge. The student will have built up an ability to reconstruct and critically evaluate the arguments offered in support of competing epistemological views.

This course introduces three kinds of genealogical arguments – neutral, vindicatory, and debunking – acquiring a clear understanding of the logical structure and epistemic force of each of them. The first series of lectures addresses the 'state of nature' theory by which Edward Craig attempts to illuminate some key concepts and problems of epistemology. The second series of lectures covers Bernard Williams' vindicatory genealogy of the intrinsic value of the virtues associated with truth, namely, sincerity and accuracy. And the third series of lectures tackles the genealogical arguments by which Nietzsche and other philosophers attempt to debunk our moral concepts and beliefs.

This is an advanced level art studio course for students with prior experience. The course focuses on from drawing to sign, learning to see and observe as a starting point for drawing. Students learn about pictorial materials and classical and modern drawing techniques. Students engage in self-analysis and inner exploration, and they learn how to use the sign to translate the emotion of gestures. The sign becomes an opportunity for analysis and research for students, who use their own expressive language. Teaching methods include drawing from life with posed models. 

At the end of the course, students have acquired knowledge on the main morphological, physiological, and molecular responses of higher plants to environmental cues and the basic mechanisms of tolerance and adaptation to adverse conditions. Students learn about how plants contribute to air quality by the release of biotic particulates and by interfering with air pollutants derived from anthropogenic activities. Due to changes in plant distribution in relation to climate change, students become acquainted with the contribution of alien species to the release of such biotic particulates. Students also learn about methods employed in aerobiology for the quantitative and qualitative assessment of pollen and other air-borne allergens, gain the capacity to interpret data, and critically read scientific literature relating to this topic. They also acquire knowledge on the ability of plants to monitor environmental quality and influence it, on the release of volatile plant compounds with therapeutic effects as well as on the possible use of plants in environmental phytoremediation. Additionally, students in the laboratory acquire methods to analyze plant allergenic proteins, to monitor the effect of stress on photosynthetic activity; in addition, students analyze an aerobiological sample, allowing them to know that a myriad of microorganisms and particulates (many of which are respirable) are present in the atmosphere.

Laboratory activities:

1. Microscopic recognition of aerobiological slide: allergenic and non-allergenic pollen

2. Western blotting/dot blotting for apple and pollen allergenic proteins

3. Pollen-fruit cross-reactivity with specific Ab and comparison with non-cross-reactive pollen/food

4. Handy-Pea: evaluation of photosynthetic activity in stressed and non-stressed plants (e.g. plants maintained at 4 °C)

This course focuses on Deep Learning (DL), with an emphasis on recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP). It is structured into lectures that cover the fundamental concepts of the field, complemented by practical tutorials and exercises, where these concepts are further expanded and practically implemented through live coding sessions (mainly in Python). The course is organized along the following themes: Recap of Machine Learning (ML) fundamentals; Introduction to Neural Networks and the connectionist paradigm: from the perceptron to Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs), universality theorems, the backpropagation algorithm, and principles of Neural Network design; The rise of Deep Learning: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), regularization techniques, and residual connections. Basics of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), attention mechanisms, and Transformers; Introduction to Natural Language Processing (NLP): text preprocessing, static and contextual word embeddings, language modelling, and neural approaches to text processing—from neural machine translation to modern large language models (LLMs). Course prerequisites: solid understanding of calculus, linear algebra, probability, and statistics, along with basic prior programming experience in Python.

By the end of the course the student: knows the categories and practices of contemporary art, both in terms of technical-linguistic and theoretical aspects; understands the role assumed by the visual arts in the transition between the 19th and 21st centuries, in their specific development and relation to the parallel trends of other artistic disciplines; is able to understand the contribution made by contemporary art to the development of visual culture with particular attention to technological, media, and social issues.

Course contents: contemporary art, i.e., the aspects that have developed and have been commonly accepted, in the transition between the 19th and the 21st century, as fundamental to defining artistic practices. In particular, the definition and meanings of contemporary art, the mediums and the characteristics of the work, the role of the artist, the dynamics of the art system—from the market to the different forms of circulation—and the evolution of a pluralistic and global perspective.

In the first unit, the main parameters of periodization of contemporaneity are exposed, the forms and contexts are identified, and the meanings usually attributed to contemporary art are discussed. The second unit is devoted to the work of art, i.e., the mediums commonly adopted by artists, issues related to the uniqueness of the work, and the rise of forms of expression that understand the work as an experience. The third unit considers the perception and social role of the artist, with a focus on the convergences between art and life, collective practices, and the evolution in the working methodologies of visual artists. The fourth unit considers the founding features of the art system, from the role of the public to the art market and the idea of the exhibition. Finally, the fifth unit examines the emergence of a pluralistic perspective in light of issues related to feminism, gender identity, postcolonialism, and globalization.

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, students know how to interpret the characteristics of the contemporary city in a changing climate. The student will know the main available tools and methods to understand, plan, and design adaptive communities, taking into account the peculiarities of diverse context (urban, rural, island, mountain). Greening and ecosystem services are explored as a strong driver of resilience and sustainability, while the principle of environmental and climate justice is integrated throughout the course.

The course begins with an introduction to planning principles, processes, methods, and tools to support students' understanding around the concept of sustainability, resilience, and planning. Planning is considered in both rural and urban environments, considering those as a complex socio-ecological system. Around the idea of planning, the course touches upon the following topics: planning in a changing climate, but how is the climate changing?; climate and environmental justice; climate risks in urban and rural areas; urban areas: greening the city; rural regeneration theory and practice from case studies and projects; and landscape management and values.