ABOUT

Summer School in Climate Change

Born in 2024 at the Department of the Arts of the University of Bologna as a BIP – Blended Intensive Program, directed by Francesco Maria Spampinato and developed in partnership with Jagiellonian University and the University of Helsinki, the Summer School in Climate Change offers an interdisciplinary platform to explore ecological thinking at the intersection of environmental science, cultural practices, and artistic research. The focus is on the pressing issues surrounding climate change and the role of the arts in proposing new social and economic dynamics. Through an interdisciplinary approach involving scholars from usually distant academic fields such as art history, performance studies, media studies, economics, food science, sociology, and education, it develops a speculative approach aimed at understanding the dramatic environmental condition that has taken shape with the advent of the Anthropocene. This international, integrative, and innovative educational project moves from a reconsideration of cultural practices as the driving force behind social processes based on forms of public engagement, aimed at developing hypotheses of futuristic societies, eliciting a conflict between utopia and dystopia. 

The Una Europa Network

The Summer School in Climate Change was born as an offshoot of the Una Europa Micro-Credential in Sustainability, developed by the University of Helsinki, Jagiellonian University, and the University of Bologna, which gives a holistic understanding of global sustainability challenges through five MOOCs based on the latest research on environmental sustainability, atmospheric sciences, economics, and art. This experience led to a new partnership between three Una Europa universities (University of Bologna, University of Helsinki, KU Leuven) and three African universities (University of Johannesburg, Université de Kinshasa, University of Nairobi), which brought to the Una Europa Virtual Exchange for high-quality sustainability education. Both the Una Europa Micro-Credential in Sustainability and the Una Europa Virtual Exchange are pioneering and experimental educational programs that foster transnational dialogue and collaborative learning, enabling participants to engage critically with sustainability challenges through diverse academic and cultural lenses.

Director of the Summer School
Francesco Maria Spampinato - University of Bologna 

Tutors
Sara Molho - University of Bologna (2024, 2025)

Simona Maria Pagano - University of Bologna (2025)

Beatrice Sartori - University of Bologna (2024)

Academic coordinators for partner universities

Mateusz Chaberski – Jagiellonian University (2025)

Silvia Gaiani – University of Helsinki (2024)

Michał Pałasz – Jagiellonian University (2024, 2025)

Anna Sławik - Jagiellonian University (2024)

Marianna Vivitsou – University of Helsinki (2025)

Organizing Secretariat and Graphic Design

Fondazione Alma Mater

With the technical support of VARLab, Università di Bologna