PhD in Global Histories, Cultures, and Politics

The PhD program is characterized by a global and interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of historical and social processes. The “global” is not merely understood as a wider geographical scale, but rather as an epistemic device leading the study of the present and the past. “Globalization” is therefore not taken as something given but as a set of processes, whose variable combination is necessarily the effect of the action of specific political, social, and economic forces that attract investigation through the interaction of multiple disciplinary approaches. Historiography  -touching upon topics transversal to different ages such as political, economic, social, and religious history, history of ideas, institutions, settlements, gender history - meets area and oriental studies to grasp the polycentric of global spaces traversed by transnational flows of people, ideas, and commodities. Intellectual and conceptual history, pursued in a non-Eurocentric perspective and attentive to theoretical traditions that have remained marginal in political, social, and cultural studies, allows an analysis of the prospects and limits of Western grand narratives. Anthropology, through a peculiar ethnographic sensitivity, demonstrates how phenomena with a global scope inscribe onto the concreteness of social actors’ experience. Political philosophy, understood as critical theory and entering constant dialogues with such approaches as cultural, postcolonial, and gender studies, provides the conceptual and analytical framework that is needed for the production of a global political theory. Geography provides the language and the methods that allow grasping and representing the multiple spatial and territorial frame within which the investigated processes develop – with a specific focus on “trans-scalarity”. 

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

The main purpose of the PhD School in Global Histories, Cultures and Politics is to train scholars in the main scientific area, which are involved in the PhD project: history, anthropology, political theory and history of political thought, oriental and area studies, religion studies, and geography. A particular attention will be devoted to the interdisciplinary dimension of research as well as to the critical reflection on the multiple methodologies of human and social sciences. The most important outcome of the PhD school will be the development of original PhD thesis and the communication and dissemination of their research results in broader research environments. The acquirement of some basic abilities in the field of research will be guaranteed by means of a specific training in the following fields: ability to integrate in international research networks, to publish in high-ranked scientific journals, to develop research projects for post-doc job opportunities.  

The main activity of PhD students will be the research for the fulfilment of the final PhD thesis. This will involve different activities according to the thesis subject and the methodologies which will be employed: research in libraries and archives for collecting sources, critical analyisis of the sources, reconstruction of the scientific state of the art; fieldwork with ethnographical methodologies; media analysis and mapping; theoretical reflection on political concepts; philological analysis. PhD students will be encouraged to take part to scientific conferences, to project and realise seminars in order to locate their own research in wider scientific environments. There will be an annual conference in which all PhD students will present their research work to external discussants.
Some research typologies could also require traineeship at scientific and cultural institution, at public institutions in the field of economic and social administration, or at Ngo.

Teaching activities will be organized in three main strands:
- Individual tuition: each PhD student will be supervised by one tutor, who will work in collaboration with the other members of the PhD committee. Supervision is aimed at providing the adequate analytical tools to carry out the research and to write the final dissertation. It will be focused both on research methodologies and the use of interdisciplinary perspectives. As part of their training, PhD students will be required to present their research during workshops and seminars organized in cooperation with other universities and/or research institutions.

• Interdisciplinary training: the PhD program will organize seminars and workshops in which the PhD students will get in touch with different methodologies and fields of enquiry. This strand is aimed at developing analytical tools needed to study history, politics and cultures in a global perspective. Thanks to these activities, PhD students will be able to develop the skills needed to situate their research in a wider interdisciplinary analytical framework.
• Job-oriented training activities: this strand is aimed at providing PhD students with teaching skills, network-building capacities, and the know-how needed to write and manage successful research proposals. These activities will be organized in cooperation with other PhD programs. Training will be provided by the Research Area staff of the University of Bologna, as well as by officers from various funding institutions.
• project designing for research in social sciences and humanities at international, national and regional level.

In order to promote their international training, enrolled PhD students will be required to spend at least six months abroad. As part of their training, they will be encouraged to participate to international conferences and summer schools organized by the PhD program, as well as by international and Italian research institutions.

The Phd school can take advantage of international networks established by members of the doctoral board and of the two departments in order to develop international consortia for the achievement of double or joint degree.
At present, the Global Academy of Humanities and Critical Theory has promoted a project for the construction of a transnational Phd school with the University of Virginia.
A collaboration with German research institutions for doctoral training and funding – such as Bielefeld University - has been established long ago. We will further cooperate with institutions which fund scholarships for graduated students in foreign countries. In particular, there are already existing contacts with CONFAP and the China Scholarship Council.
We highlight in particular that the PhD program joined the UNA Europa initiative, in the framework of which a joint doctorate program in Cultural Heritage has been activated, and the framework agreement witth the European University Institute, which
foresees, among many objectives, the hosting and exchanges of PhD students and the possibility, for the EUI PhD students, to be visiting lecturer at the University of Bologna and realize teaching activities, on the basis of ad hoc agreements to be signed.

The final dissertation is the main expected result of the three-year research period. During this period, PhD candidates will be encouraged to disseminate the preliminary results of their research in PhD seminars, national and international conferences, summer schools, and joint activities with other PhD programs. They will be also encouraged to organize seminars related to their research themes.
PhD students will be encouraged to submit scientific papers to peer-reviewed journals and volumes, in order to take advantage peer-reviewers’ comments. In this way, they will be able to evaluate the scientific value of their research, as well as their ability to adequately disseminate its results.
As for the expected outcomes, the wide thematic coverage and the interdisciplinarity of the PhD program is expected to obtain research results in different fields. It will favour a reconsideration of disciplinary traditions and develop innovative conceptual and methodological approaches, fostering a multiscalar analysis of global processes based on comparative and transnational perspectives. With a special focus on the entanglement between conceptual and empirical dimensions of the research, methodological innovations are expected in the fields of humanities and socio-political sciences spatial frameworks; intercultural contact/conflict; development of trade routes; processes of consumption and labour organization; political, social, and religious movements.