Shaul Bassi

Cultural difference can push people apart; art and the humanities can bring them together in a sustainable world.

Shaul Bassi, Center Director, Venice
Laura Calvaresi

Economics never existed without an ethical discourse. How did the world of Medieval merchants express itself? How does it speak to us?

Laura Calvaresi, Ph.D. student, Venice
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Thomas Carlson

To answer the spiritual emptiness of consumer culture, reactive extremism in religion and politics, and radical transformations of life by technology, we need the humanities.

Thomas A. Carlson, Center Director, Santa Barbara
Alan de Piccolo

The themes of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice are topical now as they always were. The digital humanities can bring a fresh perspective to frame and disseminate them.

Alan Del Piccolo, Post-doc Fellow, Venice
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Luigi D’amelia

Studying religious and ethnic prejudices of the past helps us understand the roots of our current fears, dismantle forms of hatred against the «other» and build a new humanism.

Luigi D’amelia, Post-doc Fellow, Venice
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Francesco Della Puppa

As a sociologist and ethnographer, I observe young people of migrant origin and their artistic productions as actors of social change.

Francesco Della Puppa, Fixed-term Researcher, Venice
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Barbara Del Mercato

The path connecting the Humanities and Social Change is an intellectual and creative journey, its map gradually unfolding. I am glad to be on board as a project manager.

Barbara Del Mercato, Center Administrator, Venice

Questioning the nature of money and investigating its social perception are key to addressing crucial issues facing contemporary societies

Luigi Doria, Fixed-term Researcher, Venice
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Critical Theory, according to Max Horkheimer’s statement in 1937, forms the intellectual side of emancipation. To keep it alive, we have to relentlessly analyze the crises which shape our present and inform our emancipatory hopes.

Rahel Jaeggi, Center Director, Berlin
Andrea Drocco

Only an interdisciplinary work on the humanities can shed light on the growth of religious extremism across the world.

Andrea Drocco, Fixed-term Researcher, Venice
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Eva von Redecker

My thirst for theory has always been driven by a desire to see more, and with more than my own eyes: multiple perspectives, complex interconnections, and revolutionary possibilities.

Eva von Redecker, Deputy Director, Berlin
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Jan Dutkiewicz

As a political economist, I find in the humanities the intellectual and moral tools necessary to study social change in a world increasingly in thrall to market forces.

Jan Dutkiewicz, Dissertation Fellow 2017/18, Santa Barbara
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Isette Schuhmacher

Historical change in line with a hegelian-marxian tradition comes about and runs through contradictory processes and crises. Given that currently emancipatory transformation is in a crisis, we need to uncover the inconsistencies, debris and hardenings that block its proceeding.

Isette Schuhmacher, Research Assistant, Berlin
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What we need today is to take a closer look at the bigger picture. The humanities provide the lense for recalibrating our perspective on the crises we currently face.

Lea-Riccarda Prix, Doctoral Candidate, Berlin
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Pierre Fasula

Philosophy of literature aims not only at interpreting the world, particularly the way fiction forms our moral and political beliefs, but also, doing so, at changing it.

Pierre Fasula, Postdoctoral Scholar 2017/18, Santa Barbara
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Subaltern communities have often developed highly effective strategies to respond to the multiple current crises. The rest of the world can learn from them – not the other way around.

Daniel Loick, Fellow, Berlin
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Law coins our social grammar. Social change needs legal utopianism.

Bertram Lomfeld, Fellow, Berlin
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If history is valuable for understanding fascism, it is not because it enables us to describe what happened, but rather because it allows us to deduce from a specific combination of elements the effects that similar constellations are likely to produce today.

Zeynep Gambetti, Senior Fellow, Berlin
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William E. Goggin

Dramatic social change presents an interpretive challenge: a gap between changes occurring in society, and our ability to assess the significance of those changes. We want to interrogate that gap.

William E. Goggin, Dissertation Fellow 2017/18, Santa Barbara
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Giovanni Lapis

The study of East Asian religions can broaden our horizons and foster critical self-reflection. I find great challenges and potential in religious and intercultural education.

Giovanni Lapis, Ph.D. Student, Venice
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Tiziana Lippiello, Board Member

As a scholar of Chinese culture, I believe that to be inclusive means to enhance cultural diversity, listen to and respect the other, and learn to share our thoughts and cultural habits.

Tiziana Lippiello, Board Member, Venice
Sabrina Marchetti, Board Member

As a feminist scholar, I believe in the power of art and of the Humanities in changing our understanding of society, culture and economic life. I am happy to be part of this project.

Sabrina Marchetti, Board Member, Venice
Marco Marrone

I dream of a society where labour means that every individual is realizing his or her full potential as a human being.

Marco Marrone, Post-doc Fellow, Venice
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Francesca Massarenti

We use film to read, shape and relate to the literary past. The intersections between narratives, history and literature are key to understand how we make sense of ourselves.

Francesca Massarenti, Ph.D. Student, Venice
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Lexi Neame

I study how facts become authoritative in public life. For me, the task of the humanities is comprehension, or as Arendt put it: facing up to–and, where necessary, resisting–reality.

Lexi Neame, Dissertation Fellow 2017/18, Santa Barbara
Karen Ng

The humanities help us understand and explore the potentialities of the human form of life. How can we transform human societies such that the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all?

Karen Ng, Fellow, Berlin
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Ilenia Pittui

In the past images were used to speak to illiterate people. Are we still capable of reading them?

Ilenia Pittui, Ph.D. Student, Venice
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Erck Rickmers, Chairman

The world is in escalating crisis. We need an interdisciplinary effort to understand its underlying problems and inspire change.

Erck Rickmers, Chairman
Nina Rismal

I am concerned with visions of utopian societies and their value for effecting desirable social change. Desire and hope for a better future lie at the core of my work in Humanities and Social Change.

Nina Rismal, Director
Igiaba Scego

In the conglomeration of ethnicities, destinies, imaginations, words and even colours that form our identities we find our freedom. The humanities are basically this freedom.

Igiaba Scego, Post-doc Fellow, Venice
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Zoë Sutherland

As poetic making informs how individuals come to know and value each other in the early modern period, so for me it opens up questions of freedom and equality in our own.

Zoë Sutherland, Dissertation Fellow 2017/18, Santa Barbara
Massimo Warglien, Board Member

Text analysis offers huge opportunities to improve how we understand and predict conflict.

Massimo Warglien, Board Member, Venice
Fabiana Zollo

A cross-methodological approach is crucial to properly investigate the spreading of misinformation and its social dynamics.

Fabiana Zollo, Fixed-term Researcher, Venice
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