PhD in Literary and Philological Cultures

1. Sciences of antiquity and Sciences of books and documents
2. Italian Studies and Romance Philology

Curriculum 1: Sciences of antiquity and Sciences of books and documents

• Aegean Civilizations
• Greek language and literature
• Latin language and literature
• Classical and late antique philology
• Linguistics
• Digital Humanities
• Bibliography and Library Science
• Paleography
• Classical heritage

Curriculum 2: Italian Studies and Romance Philology

• Italian literature
• Contemporary Italian literature
• Italian linguistics and philology
• Literary criticism
• Romance Philology
• Linguistics
• Linguistics of Italian language
• Digital Humanities

Appointed by RD n. 709/2023 Prot n. 149534 on Jun 02, 2023

Achievement of a fine strategy for scientific research on literary texts. This methodology entails a wide-ranging to approach the texts, involving critical editions, analyses on literary reception, inquiries on formal, linguistic, stylistic levels.
As far as Linguistics is concerned, students will learn to describe linguistic phenomena from a syncronistic and historical point of view.
As far as Digital Humanities and Semantic Technologies are concerned, students will learn how to hybridize humanistic and computational methods in a variety of use cases.
Such a complex methodology provides skills for a variety of different educational paths and for many professional fields: in particular, for university research and teaching, for teaching in secondary school, for careers in publishing companies, journalism and cultural consultancy in public administration and in the areas of interface between new technologies and human sciences.

Bibliographic inquiries and text readings. Original research focusing on a wide range of advanced issues (including reading of manuscripts and ancient editions, consultation of archives, processing of digital archives and online data, analyses based on philological and linguistic perspectives) for the achievement of a fine methodology for scientific research on literary texts such as critical editions and the study of literary reception and history of ideas. As far as Linguistics is concerned, research activities will focus on a wide range of linguistic systems and linguistic descriptions. As regards Digital Humanities and Semantic Technologies, research activities will include: application-oriented projects (use case satisfaction); implementation of reusable software or middleware components; design of ontologies or conceptual models; empirical studies on data, digital content and users; interdisciplinary experiments or theoretical studies, e.g. jointly with cognitive scientists or philosophers.

In the first and second year of the PhD Course, teaching involves at least 100 hours per year organized as follows:

• 30 hours of common activities (also dedicated to soft skills such as European project planning, public speaking, academic English, etc.);
• 50 hours of curricular activities
• 20 hours of free activities (for participation in conferences, seminars, etc.); free teaching activities are authorized and approved by the supervisor

The common and curricular activities run from October to June and are organized in three quarters. The schedule of all activities is published on the PhD website, in the Agenda section.
The teaching activities of the Digital Humanities and Linguistics courses, which replace the curricular activities, are published, respectively, on the website of the DHARC - Digital Humanities Advanced Research Center and of the CLUB - Language Circle of the University of Bologna.
The activities of the Digital Humanities and Linguistics courses are in any case also accessible to PhD students of the two main curricula.
The teaching activities also include the attendance of master's degree courses, with the preliminary approval of the supervisor; in this case one hour of PhD teaching is equivalent to two hours of master's teaching. This type of teaching can replace curricular or free teaching, not the common one.
PhD students, always with the preliminary approval of the supervisor, may ask to replace part of curricular and free teaching activities with teaching or tutoring assignments that require an adequate and documented preliminary preparation phase.
In the third year the hours of compulsory teaching are 60 (30 of common teaching and 30 of curricular or free teaching), to give space to the writing of the thesis.
Lectures and seminars are held also by external, both Italian and foreign, teachers.

Foreign Students enrolled in the PhD course: 6 PhD candidates with scholarship funded by China Scholarship Council, 2 PhD candidates with scholarship reserved for foreign students funded by Progetto di eccellenza L. 232 del 01/12/2016.
Incoming students in joint doctoral programme:  individual co-tutelle agreements with Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris Ouest - Nanterre La Défense, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Université de Limoges, Université de Fribourg.
Outgoing students in joint doctoral programme: individual co-tutelle agreements with Université de Paris-Sorbonne, University of Zurich, École Pratique des Hautes Études EPHE, Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Université de Liege, Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Joint doctoral programmes under examination with Universidade de Sao Paulo, Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle, Université Savoie-Mont Blanc.
All PhD students must spend a period of at least six months in a foreign university.
The Ph Course has signed a framework agreement with the Universidade de Sao Paulo and a framework agreement is being activated with the Université Paris Nanterre.
Starting from the XXXV cycle, the teaching staff is made up of 1/3 of teachers from foreign universities.
Teaching activities are carried out also by foreign visiting professors, hosted in the department FICLIT within the activities of the project of excellence (Law 232 of December 1st, 2016)

Throughout the three-years course at least one presentation in a national or international Conference is expected, and the publication of an article in a scientific journal level. A special acknowledgement for publishing the PhD dissertation.