University of Bologna

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 the student's knowledge in the main criminological approaches explaining the relationship between crime, culture, and media; they will be able to critically analyze media narratives and recent crime, deviance, and control phenomena emerging in digital societies, relying on contemporary examples and on the related scientific literature.

The course explores the intersection between crime and the media, with particular attention to how deviance and criminality are represented across various mediums, including television, newspapers, cinema, literature, and social media. It also examines criminologically significant phenomena that characterize contemporary digital society, such as digital vigilantism and the spread of fake news. The course fosters a critical and sociological approach among students toward the narratives, images, and phenomena of deviance, crime, and social control that are constructed and reproduced through the media.

In the first part of the course, students are introduced to the main theoretical frameworks developed within criminology in the broad field of crime and media studies, with a particular focus on traditional media. The second part addresses forms of deviance, criminality, control, and harm specific to today’s digital society, drawing on examples from recent literature in digital criminology. The third part focuses on what can be considered ‘classic’ themes within the cultural criminology of media, such as the criminalization of music (and other creative cultural expressions), representations of policing in literature and television, and the phenomenon of trial by media.

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 focuses on the most influential theories regarding the causes of war. Drawing on literature from political anthropology, social psychology, strategic studies, diplomatic history, sociology, political theory, and international relations, it identifies key variables and causal pathways that illuminate war as a recurring phenomenon, as well as specific conflicts. Historical examples are used throughout to illustrate the theoretical material and help students develop critical perspectives. The course equips students with a comprehensive "toolbox" of applied knowledge, enabling them to conduct their own analyses of international conflicts.

The course includes content such as: deciding for war; political institutions and war; interest groups and lobbies; diversion and war; capitalism and war; strategic interaction and bargaining; military technology; international anarchy and the security dilemma; polarity and stability; power transition and hegemonic war; the liberal international order and its crisis; the rise of China and the end of unipolarity; and the Ukrainian War.

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 of the unit are to gain a clear understanding of: why road safety is important, how we can achieve improvements and who is doing the work; the multidisciplinary nature of road safety and why we need to use a combination of engineering, education, and enforcement to be successful; the behavior of road users and ways in which the road environment can be designed/improved to cater for their needs; the complexity of the human/vehicle/road system and how the interrelationships work to influence the level of safety; what are the legal responsibilities of road authorities and decision makers and how they can fulfil them; how to undertake accident investigations; how to collect accident data and what to look for in quality data; how to analyze accident data, turn it into information and develop cost effective, practical counter measures; what needs to be done after treating a site and how to do it; how to be proactive in preventing accidents before they occur. Specific skill sets developed in the class are: Analysis of traffic collision and injury data; Analysis of collision risk in a road network (network screening); Identifying crash causal factors; Identifying and evaluating countermeasures; Principles of Road Safety Management; What is the Road safety Audit procedure, and what are aims and objectives, roles and responsibility; history of road safety audit, road safety audit and design standards, road safety audit tasks, various stages of safety audits; common identifiable problems; How to structure a road safety audit report, identify common problems; and case studies and site visits; what to look for on site visits.

The course explores the fundamentals and role of road safety engineering theory and practice. An appreciation of the design of traffic elements on the road network and a rigorous detective approach to investigating road crash data are developed. Participants learn applied skills to find road crash data and analyze it to determine the nature and extent of road crash problems at any given site. An ability to translate road crash data into meaningful information, determine counter measure options from thorough analysis of information and prioritize and evaluate counter measure implementation programs is cultivated. Students become aware of key issues in road safety policy, techniques for accident analysis, and prevention and road safety audit procedures. Other topics include the Highway Safety Manual, screening methods for identifying high collection concentrations, and proactive improvements to traffic safety.

The course examines principles of engineering and behavioral science relevant to preventing traffic collisions and subsequent injury. Human behavior, vehicle design, and roadway design are considered as interacting approaches to preventing traffic crashes and injuries. Safety of vulnerable road users (primarily pedestrians and bicyclists) is covered extensively.

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 master some of the main notions of philosophical aesthetics in order to use them as tools to account for contemporary phenomena in which the aesthetic plays a crucial role on the cultural and experiential levels. Students acquire a good degree of autonomy in analyzing aesthetic-philosophical texts concerning discussions carried out over the last few decades. In particular, the course stresses topics and problems that have emerged more recently in the international discourse and that pertain to the nexus between the experiential dimension, the elaboration of expressive languages, and the formal and design-related articulations taking place within the field of the aesthetics. The aim of the course is to reflect on the (dis-)continuity and the (a-)symmetry between the conceptual-theoretical and the operative-experiential levels, and thus contribute to the development of a critical and non-dogmatic attitude toward the contemporary horizon that characterizes the aesthetic.

The course addresses a category which has traditionally been either problematic for, or foreign to, aesthetics: function. The course shows that, when understood as something operative and transformative and not merely contemplative and conservative, the aesthetic possesses an inherent functional character. Aesthetic function is dealt with through different philosophical perspectives, ranging from pragmatism to critical theory, to the more recent everyday aesthetics.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. In this course, students acquire necessary knowledge to read and critically interpret architecture between the fourteenth and sixteenth Centuries as well as the methodological tools to understand the territory, the city, and its major buildings. In addition, the course deals with a number of theoretical and practical issues of Renaissance architecture that are still alive nowadays.

The course provides a historical overview of the major figures of Italian Renaissance architecture from 1400 to 1600—Brunelleschi, Alberti, Bramante, Raphael, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michelangelo, Peruzzi, Giulio Romano, Sanmicheli, Sansovino, Palladio as well as an outlook on a selection of European Renaissance architects. They are analyzed within the cities or countries they operated and will be compared with the cultural, social, and political local context. The second part of the course is an overview on a selection of European courts and on the role of humanistic architecture at the dawn of colonialism. Issues such as local antiquities, revival and survival, rules and license, theory of architecture, drawings and graphic conventions are addressed throughout the course. 

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.

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)