Faculty

An associate professor, Francesco Spampinato conducts research in the fields of contemporary art history and visual studies, with a focus on the relationships between contemporary art, media, and technology. His latest publications include GMM – Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici: Computer Comics 1984–1987 (NERO, 2021), Art vs. TV: A Brief History of Contemporary Artists’ Responses to Television (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Ran Slavin: Shapeshifter (Mousse Publishing, 2022), The Pandemic Visual Regime: Visuality and Performativity in the COVID-19 Crisis (Punctum Books, 2023) and Skank Bloc Bologna: Alternative Art Spaces Since 1977 (2024 – winner of the Italian Council 2022 grant promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture). Spampinato is PI for the University of Bologna of the "Micro-Credential in Sustainability" and the "Virtual Exchange for Sustainability," two innovative study courses developed within UNA Europa and funded by the European Commission. He's also a member of the extended consortium PE11 “Circular and Sustainable Made-in-Italy” sponsored by the NRRP (PNRR).

Silvia Gaiani is a Senior Researcher at Ruralia Institute, University of Helsinki where she is currently leading research on Innovations and entrepreneurship towards a sustainable transition of the food system. Before joining Ruralia Institute, Silvia has worked for FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations at its headquarters in Rome, Italy and WMO, the World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research and consultancy activities focus on the sustainability of the food supply chain, food innovation and entrepreneurship, food security. Silvia holds a master degree in International Relations and two PhDs, one in International Cooperation and Policies for Sustainable Development and one in Food Politics and Economics.

Dr. Michał Pałasz, assistant professor at the Department of Contemporary Culture of the Institute of Culture, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland). He studies management in the Anthropocene, which he understands as ways of organizing a sufficiently good common world in times of climatic and ecological catastrophe. He is interested in degrowth, posthumanism, actor-network theory, environmental humanities, climate education and their relations with management, especially humanistic management and critical management studies. Scientific editor of the books "The End of the World in Five Minutes. Climate-ecological Crisis in the Voice of Multiple Sciences" (with Kasia Jasikowska, 2022) and "To the Heart. Managing Social Engagement Through Media, Music and Marketing" (2023). Member of, among others Climate Council of the Jagiellonian University, Culture and Media Management Committee of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Humanistic Management Network and International Degrowth Network.

Assistant Professor at the Institute of Economics, Finance and Management of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Member of the Strategic Management Society. Involved in an ongoing collaboration with the University of Canterbury Business School (New Zealand). Visiting Professor at the Università Degli Studi di Pisa (Italy). Author of the Methodology of Identification of Strategic Stakeholders® (MISS). Anna’s research interests revolve around value creation in a broad sense, as a core purpose of any social system. She is particularly intrigued by how social, organizational, and cognitive factors shape the decision-making processes and strategic choices regarding stakeholder approach. Her expertise also lies in applying the stakeholder approach to studies on CSR and ESG.

Graduate of the Jagiellonian University in Business Administration and Journalism and Social Communication.

She is a Senior assistant professor. She carries out research in the field of participation and civic imagination processes, cultural participation, the role of culture and artistic practices in the production of well-being and social change and study of audiences and participatory cultures. She holds her doctorate in Sociology. She has been a research fellow at the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna and at the Department of Sociology and Business Law of the University of Bologna, in the context of various European projects. She has been collaborating for many years with the Center for Advanced Studies on Consumption and Communication of the Department of Sociology and Business Law.  She collaborates on a scientific and methodological level with the Foundation for Urban Innovation. For several years she has designed and facilitated action-research processes with public bodies and associations.

Associate Professor in History of Contemporary Art at the University Ca’Foscari of Venice, her research is particularly focused in the indagation of the archive as an art metaphor, appropriation practices, re-enactement, participation, images theory and visual culture and the relation between art and Anthropocene. She is lined with The New Institute Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE); convenor of the ‘Re-Interdisciplinary Network (CRASSH, University of Cambridge) and she is member of the research group Global Art Archive (Universitat de Barcelona). She has been a fellow from 2016 to 2018 and affiliated fellow until 2020 at the ICI Berlin. Her academic research is sided the one of art critic and curatorship apart from having written for various magazines and essay collections and co-edited several volumes.

Dr. Giacomo Ciambotti is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan). He’s also Research Fellow at ALTIS Graduate School of Sustainable Business. Dr. Ciambotti is the research team lead at the E4Impact Foundation, which delivers programmes in impact entrepreneurship and sustainability in more than 20 African countries. Dr. Ciambotti researches the management, strategies and models of social entrepreneurs and businesses, exploring the role of those actors toward societal changes and sustainable development. His works mainly focus on African countries (including in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Rwanda) and have been published in several international journals, including Journal of Business Ethics and International Small Business Journal.

Born in Lecce, Italy, he is artist, agroecologist, and author of participatory projects driven by an innovative approach to the politics of the Commons is an advocate for collective action. His work is oriented towards site-specific research of social, political, and cultural subjects, collectivization of goods, activation of relational dynamics, and processes of emancipation and imagination. Since 2013, he has been engaged with Casa delle Agriculture in Castiglione d’Otranto (Lecce, Italy), where he serves as a co-activator of a multifaceted process of participatory agriculture, the reclamation of contaminated lands, and the establishment of a participatory economy revolving around the annual festival Notte Verde. The project, entitled Agriculture, Utopias and Community, comprises the Common Park of Minor Fruits and School of Agriculture. This pedagogical platform combines agroecological knowledge with artistic strategies and builds relationships with migrant communities, students, farmers and activists. The project is outlined in the publication Ex Situ – Compatible with life (2023). 

Marco Cucco is Associate Professor and Head of the postgraduate Master in Film and Audiovisual Management at the Department of Arts, University of Bologna. He received his PhD in Communication Sciences at the University of Lugano (Switzerland), and he has been visiting scholar at several universities: City University of New York (USA), Université de Lorraine (France), University of Leeds (UK), and Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium). His research interests concern mainly film industry and policy. He wrote three books and many articles published by international peer-reviewed journals like Studies in European Cinema, Film Studies, European Journal of Communication, Media, Culture & Society, Journal of Transcultural Communication, Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies. He is currently vice-chair of the Film Studies Section of ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association, and member of the editorial board of the scientific journal Economia della cultura. In 2022, he received the National Scientific Qualification as Full Professor.

Dr Maciej J. Grodzicki is an economist, assistant professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland; board member of the Polish Economic Network. A laureate of P.R.I.M.E. fellowship of German DAAD, conducted at the University of Bremen and the University of Sussex. In his research, he has analysed the contemporary international inequalities, industrial policies, development and global value chains, in the evolutionary and neo-Kaleckian schools of economic thought. Currently, he is also involved in the Marxist ecological economics, investigating the political economy of commons, forestry and de-growth.

Säde Hormio is an Academy Research Fellow in Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. She is also affiliated with the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm. Her research focuses on collective responsibility and social epistemology, including climate ethics. She is also interested in questions such as what is the shared responsibility of individuals for changing harmful collective practices, what we mean by the responsibility of collective agents, or how to respond to disinformation. Hormio has published various articles and co-edited two volumes. She has just published her first monograph, Taking Responsibility for Climate Change (Palgrave Macmillan 2024). 

Bologna-based Italian freelance photographer and photojournalist and Co-Founder of the collective project ‘Arcipelago-19’ (a pandemic atlas about the pandemics), he has studied Development Economics and International Cooperation at the University of Florence and holds a Master’s Degree in Development, Cooperation and Human Rights from the University of Bologna. His photographic work is characterized by a deep interest in social, political and environmental issue: over the years he has reported on civil rights struggles, documented migratory flows on the borders with Eastern Europe and witnessed the environmental impact of global climate change among them, the most recent floods in Emilia-Romagna region. Moreover, he has collaborated with La Repubblica since 2016, he has collaborated with numerous magazines and media. 

Sara Molho is a PhD student in Visual, Performing and Media Arts at the University of Bologna (supervisor prof. Francesco Spampinato). She concluded the Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Storico Artistici at the University of Milan discussing the thesis Per una ''pratica fantastica nel quotidiano''. Scenari fantascientifici, estetica cyberpunk e ricerche artistiche collettive a Milano da ''Un'Ambigua Utopia'' a ''Decoder'' (supervisor prof. Giorgio Zanchetti, co-supervisor prof. Silvia Bignami). Previously, she received her Master's Degree in History and Criticism of Art with a thesis on the participative practices in the work by Cesare Pietroiusti. Lately, she delved into the interactions between visual arts, virtual communities, and technologies in the Eighties and Nineties in Italy.  

From Naples, Italy, she is a student and activist recently graduated in the Second Cycle Degree Arts, Museology and Curatorship”at the University of Bologna. Previously she graduated in Archaeology, History of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Sciences at the University of Naples “Federico II”. Her field of research is linked to the world of social and political activism with a first thesis regarding Participatory Art in the 1970s in Campania. Her last thesis is the result of a research regarding Sami Indigenous artistic practices and visual culture as lied to activism done during a period abroad as visiting student at the University of Helsinki. Right now, her research is focused on artistic and new media practices linked to environmental and social activism. She is part of AVEC (Art, Visuality and Electronic Culture) with which she has been relator and collaborator for the different conferences held at the Department of the Arts from 2021 until today. 

Emanuele Regi is a PhD student in Visual, Performing and Media Arts at the University of Bologna. At the same University he attended a Bachelor's degree in Arts, Music and Performing Arts and a Master's degree in Music and Theatre Disciplines (Theatre Curriculum).
His field of research is the relations between the performing arts and nature, conducting research that addresses the historical-methodological aspect, a mapping of contemporary phenomena (artists, companies, festivals and residencies) and, finally, the economic and project aspect in the context of the UNESCO MaB Biosphere Reserves. He has organised numerous conferences with artists, scholars and practitioners on this topic: Connessioni Scena Natura (2022), Convention di Eirene - Danzare per la terra and Parole in cammino II (2023).
He also works in the field of theatre criticism for magazines such as Gagrin Magazine, AltreVelocità and Triennale Magazine. 

Liana is currently Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy. Liana Ricci holds a MSc in Environmental Engineer and a PhD in Urban and land-use Planning. Prior to being appointed at UCD she was Postdoctoral Fellow and Contract Professor in Urban and regional policy and Urban and land-use planning at the Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering of Sapienza University of Rome. Her research interests concern the interface of human relations with the natural and built environments with a focus on urban and environmental planning, climate change adaptation and alternative forms of infrastructure and service provision. Between 2010 and 2015 Liana developed independent and collaborative research projects on Adaptation to climate change in coastal Dar es Salaam: methodologies for mainstreaming adaptation into local plans for urban development and environmental management (2012-2014), on Methodology for analysis and design of local plans of action for adaptation to climate change (2010-2012) and on water infrastructure resilience in coastal Dar es Salaam in Tanzania (2015-2016). She was also researcher and member of the coordination and management team of Adapting to Climate Change in Coastal Dar es Salaam - ACCDAR (2009-2015) a project co-funded by the EU under the Thematic Programme for Environment and sustainable management of natural resources, including energy. Liana was blue book trainee at European Commission - DG CLIMA working as Policy Assistant in the team for Mainstreaming of Climate Action into Cohesion Policy for the programming period 2014-2020 and in macro-regional strategies, and supported the development of Knowledge Gap Strategy for Climate Action. Liana was also at UN-Habitat - Urban Planning and Design Branch, contributing to research related to Cities and Climate Chance Initiative (CCCI) and supporting the development and implementation of innovative approaches in planning for urban development and environmental management, and climate change. 

Dr. Laura Riuttanen is a university lecturer in atmospheric sciences at the University of Helsinki Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR). She leads Climate University, network of 25 HEIs in Finland to develop and foster climate change and sustainability teaching in higher education. She is also an academic lead of Una Europa Micro-Credential in Sustainability.

Beatrice Sartori is a PhD student in Arts, History and Society at the University of Bologna with a research on virtual bodies, avatar and proxy identities at the intersections between Post-internet and Posthuman contemporary artistic practices. She graduated in Arts, Museology and Curatorship MA program discussing the thesis “Visual Pandemic: Street Art Representations of Covid-19”. Since September 2022 she has been a practice-based researcher at Studio Riccardo Benassi for which she supervised the artist book Daily Dense Dance Desire (DDD) published by Distanz in 2023. Since 2021 she has been on the board of AVEC (Art, Visuality and Electronic Culture), a graduate student workshop at the University of Bologna active in engaging researchers, curators, artists and philosophers in investigating the complexity of post-internet digital culture. 

Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts, University of Bologna. He's a researcher and teacher in sociology, with a focus on culture and media. He has studied at the University of Bologna, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Milan, and was a Fulbright Scholar at New York University. His cultural field includes cultural production, digital media and visual culture, with a focus on processes of social and technological innovation. His research focuses on magazine photography, global crises and their political impact on social media, popular music and national identity. At the University of Bologna, he's a member of DAMSLab, a laboratory focused on cultural urban valorisation at the Faculty of Arts.

Clea T. Waite, Ph.D. is an internationally exhibited intermedia artist, scholar, engineer, and experimental filmmaker investigating the material poetics emerging at the intersection of art, science, and technology. She is a pioneer artist of immersive, cinematic works engaging embodied perception, dynamic composition, and sensual interfaces – as well as one inter-species collaboration with several hundred tropical spiders. Her multidisciplinary practice is modeled on the experimental laboratory, combining research, art-making, and scientific collaborations. Project themes examine climate change, water ecology, astronomy, particle physics, feminism, and popular culture. Waite brings a unique blend of expertise to her projects from which cross-disciplinary synergies emerge. 

Waite received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in Media Arts + Practice, and Bachelor and Master’s degrees in physics and computer graphics from the MIT Media Lab. Recent exhibitions include: The National Arts Club in NYC, Ars Electronica Barcelona, CODAME San Francisco, the Open Sky Project Hong Kong, the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation Tokyo, and the Boston CyberArts Festival. Awards include the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative, the IBM Innovation Prize for Artistic Creation in Art and Technology, and the Medienboard Berlin/Brandenburg.

I am a graduate of the Interfaculty Individual Studies in Humanities at the Jagiellonian University (MA in Management and Quality) and the Culture and Media Management Studies at the JU Institute of Culture. I am currently preparing my dissertation under the “Society of the Future” program at JU Doctoral School in the Social Sciences. My research focuses on the interdisciplinary issues of climate change adaptation and the broadening the discourse of the social sciences towards posthumanist perspectives. At the moment, I am conducting research on urban management in the face of a hyperobject - climate catastrophe. I am a member of the international Humanistic Management Network and the Climate Council of the Jagiellonian University. I am also active art critic and futurological journalist; in the past I was professionally engaged in the visual arts industry. The research projects I have been involved in address the adaptation of management to the challenges of today: whether in the context of climate change or supporting value-driven business. I have also had the opportunity to explore the subject of accessibility for people with disabilities and to be part of a team investigating core values in the self-identification of the academic community. Among my research interests are all of the above-mentioned themes: the social issues of climate change, resilient urban and university management, the philosophies of posthumanism and animal studies. I like cats and green tea.