MSCA2024_0000049 – “PEtendi Tempus: Exploring Roman Elections (consulships 133-79 BC) (PETERE)”

Project code: MSCA2024_0000049
Project title: “PEtendi Tempus: Exploring Roman Elections (consulships 133-79 BC) (PETERE)”
CUP C93C25001940006
Principal Investigator dr. Eleonora Zampieri
Project duration 15/05/2025 – 14/05/2028

Abstract
The project PETERE, whose acronym, in Latin, means 'to present a candidacy', aims at investigating the electoral campaigns and the elections for the consulships in the period 133-79 BC, by researching the reasons whereby successful candidates won the elections. This will be done not only by means of the tools offered by the historical and philological research, but also implementing the critical instruments offered by political psychology. PETERE constitutes a much- needed expansion of my Marie Skłodowska-Curie project AMBIRE, since it will allow the completion of a unified view on the topic for the whole late Roman Republic. In fact, AMBIRE investigated consular campaigns and elections in Rome during the years 78-46 BC; PETERE will focus on the same, although much less explored topic throughout the preceding 50 years, a period characterised by civil war, social conflicts, clashes on state policies, and the emergence of powerful individuals like Marius, Cinna, and Sulla. It will analyse reasons for, and factors impacting on successful consular candidacies, as well as rejections (repulsae) of other candidates (at least 12 cases are known). The importance and effectiveness of this type of research has been demonstrated by the results reached by AMBIRE, which furthered our comprehension of canvassing and elections in the post-Sullan period, and contributed to the lively debate on Roman Republican politics and institutions. Furthermore, the analysis of the candidates’ profiles through the theories elaborated by research in political psychology revealed innovative insights on how Roman voters might have developed their decision, and how this influenced the activity of candidates, laying the groundwork for the elaboration of a pioneering research approach. PETERE will build on these results, by applying the already successful methodology used in AMBIRE to investigate a period that, in relation to elections, has attracted less attention than the post-Sullan phase. This research is essential for various reasons: 1) it will not constitute a simple repetition of the research carried out for AMBIRE, since the considered period preceeds Sulla’s innovations regulating the careers of magistrates, their duties while in office, the rules for access to magistracies and the date of consular elections; furthermore, between 133 and 79 BC other laws were approved, related to the voting rights of freedmen (lex Aemilia de libertinorum suffragiis, 115 BC), and the intervals for the presentation of candidacies (lex Caecilia Didia, 98 BC); thus, different factors impacted on canvassing tactics, self-representation of candidates, candidacies, elections, and parameters of choice by voters; 2) therefore, it is also worth exploring these aspects through the theories elaborated by research in political psychology, to detect differences with the post-Sullan period, refine the range of application of such an analytical framework and achieve the elaboration of a methodology applicable to the whole history of the Roman Republic.

  SOE2024_0000046 – “History, memory and cultural heritage between Nation- and STAte-building. Archives and Historiography in Pre-Unitarian Greece (19th-20th centuries) (HINASTA)”

Project code: SOE2024_0000046
Project title: “History, memory and cultural heritage between Nation- and STAte-building. Archives and Historiography in Pre-Unitarian Greece (19th-20th centuries) (HINASTA)”
CUP C93C24004910006
Principal Investigator dr. Cristina Setti
Project duration 1/03/2025 – 28/02/2028

Abstract
Scholarship has long observed how, throughout the contemporary era, Nation-building and State-building are two different processes embedded in different temporalities. The Greek case shows better than other countries that the building of a national identity can precede the eventual presence of a state. At the same time, it suggests that the making of a common national heritage is a result of selections and compromises depending on conflicting views upon what is ‘history’ and what is ‘memory’. This project aims to explore the different forms of local historiography that developed in the Ionian Islands and in Crete in the nineteenth century, shortly before the annexation of these territories (respectively in 1864 and 1913) to the Greek nation-state. It proposes to analyse the intellectual formation, social networks, epistemological approaches and research practices initiated by the founding fathers of the medieval and modern historiography of the former Venetian-ruled islands in Greece, namely Ermanno Lunzi (1806-1858) and Stefanos Xanthoudidis (1864-1928), as well as their specific entourages. They are in fact the first scholars to have framed non-Hellenic sources about the Greek islands within a scientifically structured historiographical narrative, based on a reasoned use of archival documents, and not always consistent with that of Greek national historiography and its connections with Philhellenism and

Romanticism. The first objective of the project is to define in detail the context of their operas, in order to shed light on neglected aspects of their working conditions. The second objective of the project is to grasp the practical effects of their historiographical activities on the building of insular social memory and on local policies about heritage. This will be done through an accurate program of archival research, starting from Lunzi’s and Xanthoudidis’ personal papers preserved in Athens and Iraklio, and then irradiating towards other Greek areas.

  SOE2024_0000047 – “Objects of Pleasure. The Contribute of Anthropological Material Culture to the Emergence of Sexual Science (1870-1940) (OBSEX)”

Project code: SOE2024_0000047
Project title: “Objects of Pleasure. The Contribute of Anthropological Material Culture to the Emergence of Sexual Science (1870-1940) (OBSEX)”
CUP C93C24004900006
Principal Investigator dr. Francesca Campani
Project duration 1/03/2025 – 28/02/2028

Abstract
OBSEX explores the crucial, yet overlooked, role that anthropological material culture played in the emergence of sexual science. I argue that Western research on sexual behaviours was not just medical, but that anthropological investigation had a crucial role in making heterosexuality and pleasure key interests in the production of scientific knowledge on sexuality. In this way, OBSEX questions Michel Foucault’s dichotomy between an ‘Oriental’ Ars Erotica and a Western Scientia Sexualis by demonstrating that, from its outset (1870-1940), European scientific knowledge on sexuality was not just focused on pathology, but it was comprised of discourses addressed to pleasure and desires. During OBSEX, I will complement my background in cultural history with new historical scientific and musicographical skills, crucial to understand the role of anthropological material culture in the development of sexual science. I will use Italy and Britain as main cases to trace the scientific collection, cataloguing and study of the material evidence of ‘primitive’ sexualities (amulets, ornaments, pleasure devices, medical instruments) by anthropologists, folklorists and museum curators, and the impact of their work on sexological theories. I will detect and deconstruct colonialist and gender-oriented narratives embedded in sexological discourses. I will demonstrate that the study of anthropological material culture was not only used to prove the backwardness of the sexuality of the 'Other' but also served a scientific interest on common human features, such as the pursuit of pleasure. In this way, I will be able to show how the study of objects embedding the sexuality of the ‘primitive’ Other had a crucial role in the development of European sexual knowledge, as it was used as a mirror to read European ‘civilised’ sexuality. Giving a completely new perspective on sexual science and its history, OBSEX will place pleasure at the core of today European debate on sexual health rights.

  SOE2024_0000087 – “Building the Body Politic: The Cultivation of Individual Character and the Virtuous Citizen in Victorian England (CHARME)”

Project code: SOE2024_0000087
Project title: “Building the Body Politic: The Cultivation of Individual Character and the  Virtuous Citizen in Victorian England (CHARME)”
CUP C93C24006280006
Principal Investigator dr. Eleonora Buono
Project duration 15/03/2025 – 14/03/2028

Abstract
This project is a study of the political importance of the concept of personal character in Victorian England. CHARME will be developed through a Global Fellowship with the University of Lausanne and the University of Bologna. The overarching goal of this project is understanding the relationship between the cultivation of individual character and the plans for building a healthy body politic. I will thus demonstrate that the individual character was educated to create the virtuous citizen by developing social virtues, such as altruism and reliability, in order to create a peaceful body politic. In order to achieve this overarching goal, I divided this project into three sub-goals. My first sub-goal is understanding the definition of this concept and its political importance through textual analysis of the works of late Georgian and Victorian political thought, in which the concept of character plays an important role. My second sub-goal is demonstrating that this concept influenced actual plans for educational and social reform. To do so, I will choose a case-study, focusing on the reform practices and institutions of Manchester Unitarians. This study will be pursued through archival research: I will use the vast collections in the University of Manchester Archive. My third sub-goal is identifying different types of character-building strategies adapted to the gender of individuals and identifying how these strategies shaped the political environment. This study will be pursued through textual analysis of published sources as well as through archival research of the collections in the University of Manchester Archive. This project will contribute to the fields of intellectual history, history of political thought and political philosophy. Its methodology is interdisciplinary, as it combines different fields, different kind of sources and a practice-based, bottom-up approach with a contextualist study of published texts.

  MSCA_0000029 – “Debating Abortion in Italy. A gendered and transnational history of the depenalization of abortion (1971-1981) (DAI)”

Project code: MSCA_0000029
Project title: “Debating Abortion in Italy. A gendered and transnational history of the depenalization of abortion (1971-1981) (DAI)”
CUP C93C22007560006
Principal Investigator dr. Maria Azzurra Tafuro
Project duration 20/12/2022 – 19/12/2025

Abstract
The proposed project aims at continuing, examining in depth and expanding the research hitherto conducted on Law 194, which liberalized abortion in Italy. By analyzing the discursive practices implemented by the various political cultures involved, the research focuses on the public debate (1971–1981) and reconstructs the demands, the actions and the transnational networks of the leading women’s groups in postwar Italy which developed the most consistent reflection on the topic of abortion, claiming or opposing its decriminalization: Unione Donne Italiane – Union of Italian Women, close to the Italian Communist Party; Centro Italiano Femminile – Italian Women’s Centre, a Catholic organization; and the Women’s Health Movement, (focusing on the 3 most active collectives: those of San Lorenzo, Milan , and Turin) a large feminist movement, close to the extra-parliamentary left. The project aims to go beyond the parliamentary debate, and in doing so it will examine the social and cultural impact of an epoch-making law, as well as study the use of emotions and the elaboration of gender models and national identities.

  MSCA_0000071 – “Reconsidering the Southern Europe model: labour, families and mobility in rural Savoy-Piedmont state during the eighteenth-century (RESEM)” [CLOSED]

Project code: MSCA_0000071
Project title: “Reconsidering the Southern Europe model: labour, families and mobility in rural Savoy-Piedmont state during the eighteenth-century (RESEM)”
CUP C93C22007680006
Principal Investigator dr. Beatrice Zucca Micheletto
Project duration 20/12/2022 – 28/02/2024

Abstract
The RESEM project aims to reconstruct the occupational structure and the households’ structure of a range of small and medium-size rural communities of the Savoy-Piedmont state during the eighteenth-century. The project engages with the debate about the European “little divergence” and the diffusion of the EMP from the Southern Europe perspective. It will inquire into the life-cycle servanthood, the female labour force participation rates, and the gender division of labour in preindustrial rural and semi-rural communities. Moreover, by reconstructing in detail three specific cases studies, RESEM will grasp the connexions between the occupational and social structure, the distribution of assets and wealth, and the juridical framework of property rights. The RESEM project combines a historical micro- and macro analysis level and it adopts a gender approach, paying special attention to women's work and women's property rights. In addition it will analyse the interactions among a range of factors (sex, age, marital status, occupation, mobility experiences, wealth rank, economic policies). The project will exploit a range of unpublished archival sources (population registers of rural and semi-rural Piedmontese communities, notarial deeds, laws and documents concerning the economic policy of the state and of the regions under scrutiny). Data will be collected from the National Archives in Turin (population censuses, laws and regulations), in Biella and in Vercelli (for the notarial archives). Two databases will be set up: one for the data about the households' structure and about the members of the household; the second for data issued from the notarial deeds (marriage contracts, endowments, wills, emancipations and proxies) of two communities in the provinces of Biella and Vercelli, and developed as case studies. RESEM will deliver pathbreaking findings on the occupational and social structure of the rural preindustrial Italy and will challenge the current narrative about the “little divergence”, the EMP and the stereotyped dichotomy between Northern Europe and Southern Europe. The research will be conducted by the Applicant with the technical and technological support of the DiSSGeA, the Mobility and Humanities Centre, and the MobiLab at the University of Padua, where she will be able to discuss the methodological approach and any historiographical issue risen from the archives research, from the sources and from the databases.

  SOE_0000159 – “Traumatized Subjects: Mental Health, Violence, and European Identity Between the Wars (1918-39) (TRAUMA)” [CLOSED]

Project code: SOE_0000159
Project title: “Traumatized Subjects: Mental Health, Violence, and European Identity Between the Wars (1918-39) (TRAUMA)”
CUP C93C22007710006
Principal Investigator dr. Stefano Serafini
Project duration 20/12/2022 – 31/08/2024

Abstract
TRAUMA examines the transnational and trans-medial circulation of key discourses regarding mental health and violence that emerged in interwar Europe (1918–39). I argue that, although the conflict between competing ideologies (Fascism; Liberal Democracy; Communism) undermined the construction of a coherent idea of Europe in the interwar years, discourses about mental health and violence played a vital role in fostering the formation of ideas, practices, and values that would later become a central part of the fabric of European societies. After World War I (WWI), European governments promoted the rhetoric of war’s regenerative qualities and celebrated veterans as heroes. They repressed discourses regarding mental trauma that, however, proliferated across cultural and scientific spaces. Focusing on Britain and Italy and combining cultural studies, medical, legal, and transnational history, TRAUMA explores the depiction of mentally traumatized WWI servicemen engaging in violent behavior across both the private and public spheres. Analyzing various sources, such as medical and legal texts, novels, periodicals, diaries and war memoirs, and handbooks for soldiers, TRAUMA tracks the negotiation of transnational discourses about veterans’ mental health and violent behavior across Britain and Italy. These two contexts have traditionally been placed in open opposition to each other, given their different national character (a “mature” versus a “young” nation), political regime (democracy versus dictatorship), medical background (the therapeutic, individualizing impetus of British thinking on crime versus the biological Italian approach), and the different roles played by their veterans after WWI: while in Britain they remained socially and politically marginalized, in Italy they participated in the seizure of the country orchestrated by the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1922. These opposite case studies thus offer a unique window into the commonalities that defined interwar European experience of war trauma and its effects (e.g. post-traumatic stress disorder; domestic violence; the reintegration of veterans into family life and the workforce) and allow to trace the cultural shifts and historical processes (e.g. the social support to traumatized veterans; the demythization of the soldier; the rejection of the war) that informed the construction of Europe in the late twentieth century.

Conducted at the University of Padua with two visiting periods at the Universities of Warwick and Hamburg, TRAUMA promotes debates on how cultural studies can address Europe’s most pressing concerns, as testified by the EU4HealthProgramme 2021–2027, and fosters international collaborative research on mental health, trauma, violence, and European commonality. Through a wide range of both dissemination and communication activities involving academic and non-academic audiences and institutions, TRAUMA will have major impacts at cultural, social, and educational levels.