Research fellows’ projects

The winner of the grant must carry out research and analysis of local and central archival sources and bibliography, in coordination with the person in charge, on the main subject of the project, i.e. territorial history of the Vercelli in the modern period, and to analyse, starting from a microanalytical approach, the relationship between jurisdictional and political aspects that characterised the construction of the local political space, transformations in the forms of ownership, and the exploitation practices of agro-forestry resources - pastoral and environmental.

Subject area: M-STO/02
Start date: 01/07/2021
End date: 31/12/2022
Supervisor: Vittorio TIGRINO
Research fellow:: Matteo TACCA
E-mail: matteo.tacca@uniupo.it

The term fake news has become increasingly widespread in public talks and the media over the last years. My research proposal aims to explore the different features related to the generation and spread of fake news in order to show what kind of consequences it will have on the public sphere and public debates. It will examine the way the changes in the information supply chain have brought to a form of public participation that is not characterized as much by mere ignorance, but rather by “rational irrationality”, partisan attitudes, and biased perspectives. It will further show how these elements contributed to the strengthening of on-line chambers and bubbles and the systemic distrust of traditional sources of scientific knowledge and expertise, as well as the reputation of opinion leaders and policymakers. My goal is to apply that framework to the diffusion of fake news and the behavior of deniers and skeptics during the recent epidemiological crisis.

Subject area: SPS/01
Funding Body: Fondazione CRT
Start date: 01/12/2021​​
End date: 30/11/2022
Supervisor: Anna Elisabetta GALEOTTI
Research fellow: Jacopo MARCHETTI

E-mail: jacopo.marchetti@uniupo.it

"The focus of this study is the built environment of the Russian diaspora in three largest points of the exiles’ settlement – Paris, Shanghai and New York. By looking at the morphology and diachronic development of residential, commercial and public spaces in these cities the proposed research assesses the role of urban environment in cultural exchanges between the refugee settlers and the host communities. Rooted in the spatial approach to history, this study shifts the gaze from mainstream cultural methodologies, with their concern for identity and representation, and instead concerns itself with physical, or material, aspects of the migratory experience. The study’s operative notion is the “diaspora landscape,” which is used to exemplify the elements of urban environment that were fashioned, adapted and used by the exile communities in these target territories, in order to illuminate the ways in which crosscultural communication shaped the broader urban environment.
Aside from being the first comparative study of Russian diasporas globally, this project is also the first to engage with spatial and urban history approaches to its subject. Taking advantage of the new resources available to historians in the digital age, the work includes the production an online digital companion, which acts as a repository of source documents, a compendium of secondary data sets and analytics, a cartographic toolbox and a comprehensive digital ecology stimulating the renewal of research questions and methodologies in the field of history.
Research goals
The built environment of the Russian diaspora in Paris, Shanghai and New York, comprised of the residential, commercial and public spaces, was an arena for distinctive economic, political and cultural interactions involving the refugee settlers and the populations of the international city at large. These three urban locations of the Russian settlement in Western Europe, Asia and North America represent the largest destinations for the exiles from the Bolshevik revolution and the civil war. In the 1920s and the 1930s Paris, Shanghai and New York were home to the largest and best-organized refugee communities, numbering about 50,000 persons in Paris, 30,000 in Shanghai and 6,000 persons in New York. The settlement, adaptation and evolution of the Russian communities in these cities took place concurrently, oftentimes informed by migratory exchanges between these three places.
The main discussions of this research project are built around two major interrelated themes – one addresses the substantive character of the urban space, and the other deals with site-specific practices that arose from this space. Both themes aim to test and substantiate the claim that the impact of the Russian diaspora on the urban culture of the three host cities was of a fundamentally formative nature. Among the three locales of the research, the analysis of the Shanghai locale has advanced the farthest, having been addressed in the master thesis defended on March 20, 2019 at the University of Bologna. That dissertation used the urban culture of the Russian diaspora in Shanghai as the lens to explore the dimensions of the exile experience, which included the political engagement, religious affiliation, economic practices, consumer behavior, social integration and site-specific urban practices. The study demonstrated how the exiles, compelled by their stateless status and economic disadvantage, created a consumer market for European commodities, services and lifestyles, which became a point of contact for various ethnic groups and social strata. Building on that work, the proposed doctoral research will investigate the diaspora enclaves of Paris and New York and tie these three loci of enquiry into a comparative study. Of specific interest are: the character and the evolution of the neighborhoods, streets and individual spaces inhabited by the diaspora; the migrants’ engagement with the architecture, design and construction industries; and lastly – their ascension into positions of leadership in the city-building and place-making processes.
State of the art Over the last decade, a growing number of studies have been offering diachronic perspectives on global processes, such as migration, colonization and political movements (Bickers 2012, Hooper 2016, Jackson 2017). Works examining experiences of dislocated groups in a foreign environment – such as historical studies of Jewish, Korean, Filipino, Sikh and Russian diasporas in China – have benefitted from this trend and received new treatments grounded in previously unexamined testimony, new translations of prior studies, multi-lingual scholarship and crossfertilization with neighboring fields, such as urban history (Victoir and Zatsepine 2013, among other works). The global history of the Russian diaspora belongs to such an interdisciplinary niche, sited at the cross-section of urban history, migration studies, cultural anthropology and Slavic studies. It is still an emerging field, which has thus far received less scholarly attention than the size of the diaspora and the duration
of its experience merits (Mikkonen in Flamm 2018). The proposed research aims to fill this gap by means of expanded and multilingual primary source base and an interdisciplinary toolset from the arsenal of visual history, historical geography, cultural anthropology and digital humanities. Methodology, tools and stages of work Contemporary historiography is increasingly engaging with the material and built environment as a source for studying the past, forging a methodology denoted as “a spatial turn in historical research” (Cosgrove 2004, Ethington 2007). In the recent years, works addressing urban terrain as a product of social processes have begun to emerge (Victoir and Zatsepine 2013, Roskam 2019). The proposed study applies spatial analysis and historiographical approach to previously unexamined multilingual primary sources, which came to light in the past two decades. The work on the project consists of three stages. The first stage focuses on identifying and classifying the work of architects, civil engineers, urban planners, contractors, interior decorators, sculptors and landscape designers among the diaspora in all three cities. The resulting survey of professional firms, partnerships and individuals is then situated within the broader context of planning and construction practices in each city, with the aim to gauge the diaspora’s contribution to urban development.
The second stage will address the street life and urban culture of the diaspora in each locale. This analysis will build on archival cartographic data, ownership and rental information, business records and visual evidence (elevation drawings, sketches, advertising materials and in situ photography) to achieve as complete snapshot as possible of the urban form and residence patterns in the centers of Russian settlement.
The resulting data will then be interpreted to illuminate patterns of residence, commerce and leisure among the diaspora in relationship with other groups in the host cities. The third stage studies the temporal transformations within the diaspora as well as political, social and economic processes in the background. I will analyze and compare the quantitative and qualitative changes to the landscape of the three cities in the period between the emergence and dissolution – or integration – of the diaspora along the vectors of population density, occupational distribution, occupational mobility, domestic practices, economic activities and architectural aesthetics. Based on this data, I will test and verify the thesis that shared urban spaces where members of the diaspora intersected with other groups were both the setting and the vehicle for Russian social manners and commodity culture, which left an imprint on the local identities of the host communities.
Aside from English, French, Chinese and Russian-language press in online and on-site collections, cadastral maps, atlases, demographic surveys, photographic evidence and personal testimony previously gathered, I plan to use city-planning documentation in the collection of the Municipal Real Estate Archive, Shanghai; police records in the hold of the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington; the émigré collections at the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco; the Russian Collection at the University of Hawai’i; the emigrants’ registration records at the State Archive of the Khabarovsk Region; the Nansen Foundationmarchives of the League of Nations, Geneva; Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes, France; archives of La maison russe, Paris; and others. I also intend to incorporate genealogical materials from private collections of legacy holders of a number of Russian architects, artists and interior designers, with whom I maintain contact. I intend to work in close collaboration with leading scholars of Slavic migration and urban studies, with whom I have established communication and avenues of exchange. These are Dr. Gao Jun (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences), Dr. Victoria Sharonova (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), Dr. Amir Khisamutdinov (Far Eastern University, Khabarovsk), Dr. Patricia Polanski (University of Hawaii, Honolulu), Drs. Jayne Persian and Laurie Manchester (University of Sydney), Dr. Robert Bickers (University of Bristol) and Dr. Christian Henriot (Institut d’Asie Orientale, Lyon).
Anticipated results and assessment
The physical backdrop in the urban environment informs the daily activities and actions of people who would otherwise fall outside of broad narratives and mainstream histories (Fenelly (2017), such as the experience of diasporas over time. By conducting this study I intend to demonstrate that one of the most useful tools for the studies of migrant groups, in Europe or elsewhere, can be the analysis of the way buildings and city elements are used, adapted, and modified to reflect cultural practices. By engaging wide-ranging data sets and interdisciplinary tools to bring to light the vectors of interaction of the refugees, local citizens and other groups, I hope to demonstrate the effectiveness of geographical and visual source bases for the historical study of migrant populations and to open a useful window on the ways in which an international metropolis takes shape. Lastly, the detailed and accurate biographical record of most, if not all, Russian architectural and construction professionals active in Paris, New York and Shanghai in the first half of the twentieth century is bound to be of value to genealogical researchers and historians of Russian diasporas globally, as well as for urban historians and historical geographers focused on these regions. The digital companion produced simultaneously with the doctoral research will be integrated into the Virtual Cities online platform developed by the Institut d’Asie Orientale.
Timeline of the research
Autumn/Winter 2019: Acquisition and consolidation of previously collected data; elaboration of the plan of work; publication of an academic paper (“Miss Shanghai: The Years of Infamy,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society China Branch. Hong Kong: 2019) and a chapter in an edited volume (“Cafes and Cabarets: the Food Culture of the Russian Diaspora in Shanghai, 1920–1950,” in Ilaria Porciani, ed., Food Heritage and Nationalism. Routledge: 2019).
7–8 November 2019: Presentation (confirmed) at the academic conference on global migrations at the Department of History, University of Sydney.
Spring/Summer 2020: work on the first stage of dissertation; archival research abroad (France) in Lyon and Paris; orientation and collaboration at the Virtual Cities laboratory at the Institut d’Asie Orientale, Lyon.
Summer/Autumn 2020: research abroad (USA): NARA, Washington; Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco; work on the second stage of the dissertation.
From Winter 2020/2021 onward: completion of the second stage; work on the third stage and completion of the dissertation and the digital companion.

Subject area: L-FIL-LET/14
Start date: 04/11/2021
End date: 03/11/2022
Supervisor: Stefania Irene SINI
Research fellow: EKATERINA KNYAZEVA

E-mail: ekaterina.knyazeva@uniupo.it

The purpose of this research is to address the issues concerning the development of a social and political microcosm in the Byzantine Anatolian province of Chaldia and its evolution throughout the late middle ages (12th-15th centuries). The region, which in Byzantine studies is more commonly known as Pontos, became the seat of an independent principality ruled by the dynasty of the Komnenoi in 1204 and, since it was separated by the rest of the Empire after the Turkish invasion of Anatolia (last quarter of the 11th century), it is known to have followed a rather different path in many aspects of its society, economy, administration and politics as compared to other regions of the Byzantine world. Some scholars, led by Anthony Bryer, have highlighted the archaic nature of some aspects of the local model of human interactions, but did not go all the way to an overall description of what may be called the “Pontic exception”. Recent researchers dealing with Trebizondian topics have acknowledged the existence of this sort of living anachronism within the Byzantine civilization, but they did little or no effort to properly portray it or find its roots, thus necessitating a whole reconsideration of the problems involved. The project aims to fill this gap, also by adding some more substantial elements to the current justification – which only takes geographical distance and isolation into account – of the allegedly archaic structures that were preserved in Chaldia.

Subject area: M-STO/01
Funding Body: Fondazione CRT
Start date: 02/11/2021
End date: 01/11/2022
Supervisor: Alessandro BARBERO
Research fellow:: MARCO FASOLIO

E-mail: marco.fasolio@uniupo.it

The railways were an essential factor for the development of the industrial society in the nineteenth century. This research project focuses on their construction in the Kingdom of Sardinia and pays attention to two crucial aspects in their genesis: the transfer of technology and the relationship between science and technology. The assimilation of knowledge coming from other European countries, which had already acquired experience in the field, was the spark that allowed the growth of a local technological and engineering culture. However, a significant contribution also came from academic science: physics, mathematics, and geology. It was not a simple unidirectional flow, but a mutual relationship that allowed the application of theoretical knowledge and opened new possibilities for the study of the Earth's structure. In order to analyse these aspects, the project will consider three important figures involved in the construction of the Piedmontese railway network: Henri Maus, a Belgian engineer who worked for a decade in Piedmont in important roles within the railway administration; Carlo Ignazio Giulio, a mathematician with a keen interest in the practical aspects of his discipline, who encouraged the exchange of knowledge with foreign countries and was a consultant on many railway projects; and Angelo Sismonda, an illustrious geologist who closely followed the digging of the Fréjus tunnel and was able to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by railway works.

Subject area: M-STO/05
Funding Body:  Fondazione CRT
Start date: 01/10/2021
End date: 30/09/2022
Supervisor: Maria Teresa MONTI
Research fellow: Fabio FORGIONE

E-mail: fabio.forgione@uniupo.it

This project focuses on The Klaxon (1923), To-Morrow (1924), The Irish Statesman (1923-1930), and The Dublin Magazine (1923-1958) – four magazines which came into existence in post-independence Ireland. In contradiction to prevalent understandings of the 1920s as a decade of stagnation and cultural isolation, the analysis of these magazines reveals a dynamic and varied cultural panorama, with porous boundaries that made it susceptible to foreign, transatlantic influences. Both the non-fictional and creative writings show that the intellectuals and artists involved in these editorial projects tried to foster distinct Irish cultural identities while working towards the creation of a modern culture – especially a modern literature – that was transcontinental and transatlantic. Many of these contributors were sensitive to the new forms of artistic, literary expression coming from across the Atlantic, and believed that their reception could help the formation of a more inclusive, less insular Irish culture. Therefore, the project is first concerned with the analysis (close reading) of how the reception of international modes and ideas was integrated with Irish forms of expression. Second, the investigation extends to other bodies of writing – institutional correspondences, editorial board minutes, government reports, and other periodicals – to trace the contours of the transatlantic cultural space within which these periodicals operated.

Subject area: L-LIN/10
Funding body: Fondazione CRT
Start date: 01/10/2021
End date: 30/09/2022
Supervisor: Carla POMARE' DETTO MONTIN
Research fellow: Elena Ogliari

E-mail: elena.ogliari@uniupo.it

This project sheds light on a specific kind of life writing, i.e. nonfiction about mass disasters, by focusing on a corpus of texts concerning catastrophes which have occurred in the last decades. The comparative discussion aims at identifying the characteristic features of this literary genre, mainly in terms of linguistic and expressive means. The research, which leans on trauma studies and theories of autobiography, also accounts for the similarities with the language used in the communication and perception of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Bridging present and past situations of crisis, the project investigates the complex interaction between history, memory and narrative in the works of contemporary writers who have represented communities’ and individuals’ lives devastated by catastrophic events.

Subject area: L-FIL-LET/14
Funding body: Fondazione CRT
Start date: 01/09/2021
End date: 31/08/2022
Supervisor: Stefania Irene SINI
Research fellow: Mariarosa LODDO

E-mail: mariarosa.loddo@uniupo.it

"The project JuNO: Justinian’s Novels Online aims to create the first open-access online database of Justinian’s Greek and Latin novels and the related works (appendices, translations, epitomes).
Before uploading them online, the texts will be scanned, analysed by an OCR software, checked, corrected, and then tagged according to the TEI-XML standards.
The digitized texts will be finally  uploaded in the DigilibLT website (https://digiliblt.uniupo.it/), and the scholars will be able access, search, copy and download them for free, through a simple and user-friendly interface. Biobibliographical notes devoted to each author and work will also be provided, as well as a general bibliography about Justinian and the Corpus iuris civilis.
JuNO’s main goals are to replace the obsolete Bibliotheca Iuris Antiqui CD-Rom database and create the most comprehensive open-access database of Late-Antique Greek and Latin juridical texts, in collaboration with the DigilibLT database.  
This database will be useful especially for legal historians who are interested in Roman and Byzantine law, classical philologists who specialize in juridical texts, and generally all the scholars who study Classical antiquities."

Subject area: L-FIL-LET/07
Funding body: Fondazione CRT
Start date: 01/09/2021
End date: 31/08/2022
Supervisor: Raffaella TABACCO
Research fellow: Gianmario CATTANEO

E-mail: gianmario.cattaneo@uniupo.it

"The aim of the project is to exploit the potentiality of XML-TEI mark-up language as the starting point for an in-depth analysis of the process behind the composition of the Codex Theodosianus, with reference to the issues of marriage, internal family relationships and inheritance.
The Code is a source of inestimable value for the understanding and reconstruction of the era in which it was conceived, and it gave lot of information about several aspects of life in late antiquity. Less attention was paid to the process by which the compilation was made and published, namely what of previous legislations converged and what were principles and criteria on which the work was based.
To achieve this objective the text of the Codex Theodosianus will be tagged according to XML-TEI standards at two levels. In the context of DigilibLT project, I will devote myself to a first level marking, aimed mainly at highlighting the structure of the text; I will, then, deepen the level of tagging from semantic point of view, paying attention to the lexical and thematic field which will be further explored. Due to the huge extent of this work I will focus on the theme of “family”: starting from the text and observing the use of terms and lexical choices, I will try to recreate the path that led to the final codification of 438 B.C., analyse the text and compare it – if possible – with previous legal codes and framing it in the historical context."

Subject area: L-FIL-LET/04
Funding body: Fondazione CRT
Start date: 01/09/2021
End date: 31/08/2022
Supervisor: ALICE BORGNA
Research fellow: Alessandro RONCAGLIA

E-mail: alessandro.roncaglia@uniupo.it

The research project is the continuation of the work carried out during the PhD with the final goal to prepare the critical edition (already accepted by the National Edition of the Mediolatine Texts of Italy, published by SISMEL - Ed. Del Galluzzo) of books XXII-XXXI of the Chronicon by Francesco Pipino, a Dominican monk from Bologna, who lived between the second half of the 13th and the first of the 14th century. The chronicle, made up of XXXI books, is dedicated to the story of a very wide period of time, from 754 to 1317, but with additional information that goes as far as 1322. Only partially edited by Ludovico Antonio Muratori in the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores for books XXII-XXXI, the text is preserved with a single manuscript, ?.X.1.5, kept at the Estense Library in Modena. The project proposed here includes the edition of the first part of the chronicle, consisting of books I-XXI, completely unpublished, whose historical facts belong to the time frame from Charlemagne to Corrado III.

Subject area: L-FIL-LET/08
Start date: 01/09/2021
End date: 31/08/2022
Supervisor: ALICE BORGNA
Research fellow: Sara CREA

E-mail: sara.crea@uniupo.it

Prin 2017 project, prot. 2017T2SK93_004 (National Head Prof. Antonio Gargano; Head of UPO Unit, Prof. Andrea Baldissera).

The research fellow's work will have to integrate with the Unity project, which provides for the study and critical edition of various works of spiritual prose from the Spanish Golden Age, and will be addressed, in particular, to the writings of the great mystics ( Santa Teresa or Miguel de Molinos). The Research fellow will have to possess educational skills (philology of copying and author), historical-linguistic and literary skills consistent with the tasks of the unit.

Subject area: L-LIN/07
Start date: 01/07/2021
End date: 03/06/2022
Supervisor: Andrea BALDISSERA
Research fellow: Matteo MANCINELLI

E-mail: matteo.mancinelli@uniupo.it