The curriculum aims to provide graduate students with competences to manage the impact of the triple transition on education, media, and the arts, through a sociological, psychological and pedagogical perspective. The curriculum is articulated in three research areas:
Area 1. Diversity, Inclusion and Participation across Generations
This research path addresses the social and cultural consequences of the triple transition, in terms of partricipation, inclusion and diversity management in the national and supernational context. An interdisciplinary, in-depth perspective shall privilege an intersectional approach, in relation to the genders-generations nexus, particularly in reference to the impact of new technologies. Special attention shall be given to the processes of influence and representation in the media through contemporary forms of communication (social, political and cultural), with a focus on the social construction of reality through the media and the discursive media practices shaping processes and events, in terms of content, stucturing rhetoric and inner dynamnics. Against this backdrop shall the study of artificial Intelligence and new languages be articulated, as well as the social, cultural and poliical consequences of Language Models (LM). This approach shall include studies on sports and fitness, the correlation between sports and general health in recreational sport activity, active aging, and the culture of well-being addressing disabilties. Further topics of research are the representation of sports and physical activity, the transformations induced by digital media, e-sports, sports and inclusion. At the same time, the organisational and economic dimensions will be considered in relation to the processes affecting and transforming sports, but also in reference to institutions and the culture industries, international relations and integration processes, as well as nation-building and supernational formations and deconstruction processes. New inequalities and processes of inclusion represent another field of research, privileging intersectional approaches factoring gender, sexual orientation, ethnic, religious, class, disability, and generational identities. The aim is to comprehend new forms of conflict and of social hierarchisation, at the local and global levels, in order to promote new interpretative frameworks on economic, siocio-cultural and educational rights, as well as on forms of participation, national, supernational and transnational identity formations. Understanding the social effects of the triple transition (social, digital and ecological) will provide insights into trends and vertical sectors such as health-care and telemedicine, the impact of telemedicine and new technologies—particularly AI—on the inclusion opportunities and the exclusion risks, the related ethical implications, but also those relating to security, in the narrations, rhetorical and medial discursive practices udnerpinning the representation of diversity.
Area 2. Pedagogy, Education Technologies and Psychology at a Time of Transition. This research path is centered on the aquisition by graduate students of an articulated framework detailing the necessary competences intrinsic to the techniques and methodologies of empirical research both at the many levels of the traditional education sector and in reference to emerging modalities of instruction, privileging the emerging scenarios of new technologies and the questions of knoweldge management. The range of educational models, their evolution and the convergence between theory and research, as well as the various applications in different educational contexts (school levels and various corporate sectors) are all topics of research. The production and testing of technological environments and tools for web-based interaction and their impact on relationhips and identity dynamics shall intersect with the theoretical-empirical research interests listed above and the study of semiotic models and conceptual artefacts enabling to interact with/between media. Special attention shall be given to the analysis and the implementation of tools to manage information and the organisation of knowledge, to educational technologies and the modeling of educational devices, considering also the innovations and evolutions introduced by artificial intelligence and its ethical implications. Area 2 will entail pursuing on one hand theoretical goals (understanding the impact of digital, ecological and social transitions on the psychological, social and educational developement, with a special focus on sustainability, resilience, adaptability and mental well-being), on the other one operational ones (developing educational models and innovative psychological, pedagocical and didactic schemes fulfilling the needs of different groups), and also methodological ones (adopting a multidisciplinary and mixed-methods apprach integrating innovative techniques and technologies of data gathering with more traditional tools and techniques, such as surveys, interveiws, focus groups).
Area 3. Communication, Arts and Digital Cultures
This research path revolves around an in-depth study of the impact of digital innovations on communication processes, as well as on perfomative and audiovisual aesthetics and practices. Graduate students shall examine the broadest implications of generative and non-generative artificial intelligence, human-computer interacion (HCI) in reference to the conceptualisation and use of digital media and communications, the possibilities offered by metaverse to create immersive experiences capable of integrating the real and the virtual, the evolutions of the wide array of social media, the inclusion oportunities enabled by digital services in terms of accessibility, sustainability and active citizenship, security issues and issues relating to the proper modality of processing and analysing digital communication (for instance cybercrime and fake news). The impact of digital technologies and cultures on audiovsiual media and the performative arts shall be examined within experiential environments enabling the interaction between performer and machine in multimedial spectacles, as well as in technologies employing sensors, virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence to create immersive and interactive experiences, exploring also the generation of multimedia content by means of algorythms and artifical intelligence, and immersive and experiential architectures; furthermore, new audiovisual formats and languages shall be topics of research, as well as the distribution and consumption of audiovisual content through streaming platforms—taking into account reccomendations and personalisation systems—, and also interface design, editorial and curatorial strategies in art catalogues. Of equal interest for scholarly enquiry are cultural policies supporting access to the audovisual and performative cultural heritage, specifically digital archives and catalogues, cultural policies and technological tools meant for accessibility and inclusion, media literacy and education.
ERC AREAS
SH1 Social Sciences and Humanities. Individuals, institutions and markets: economics, finance and managements
SH2 Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems Political science, international relations, law
SH3 The Social World and Its Interactions Sociology, social psychology, education sciences, communication studies
SH4_1 Cognitive basis of human development and education, developmental disorders; comparative cognition
SH4_2 Personality and social cognition; emotion
SH4_5 Attention, perception, action, consciousness
SH4_7 Reasoning, decision-making; intelligence
SH4_8 Language learning and processing (first and second languages)
SH8_8 Visual and performing arts, film, design
SH7_4 Social aspects of health, ageing and society
PE6 Computer Science and Informatics: informatics and information system, computer science. scientific computing, intelligent systems
LS7 Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
