The PhD programme in Private autonomy, Business, Labour and the Protection of Rights from a European and international perspective explores the tension between individuals’ demands for freedom and their aspirations for equality: between the exercise of private autonomy in all its forms and the call for recognition and redistribution within the communities in which individuals operate, ranging from the family to businesses and the numerous manifestations of the associative dimension. The Programme comprises six specialisations: Commercial and economic law, Labour law, Comparative private law, Civil procedure law, Tax law, Reality and roots of European private law.
During the 2024/25 academic year, the Programme organised a series of lectures, seminars and conferences to explore the myriad facets of this field of study. These events benefited from the contributions of numerous international scholars. Meanwhile, members of the academic staff participated in initiatives promoted by foreign universities and research bodies, thereby enhancing the expertise available for doctoral training. PhD students have enhanced their training through stays at other Italian and international universities and research centres, in line with the programme’s strongly pro-European and internationalist ethos. A particularly significant part of their training is the PhD School, which consists of two sessions lasting several days (the Spring PhD School and the Autumn PhD School), during which PhD students attend lectures on topics of common interest and present the results of their research in dialogue with the Programme’s academic staff and with academics from other Italian and foreign institutions.
The PhD programme’s website provides an overview of its scale, comprising around sixty PhD students and an equal number of Programme’s academic staff, and the breadth of its activities and resources. The “Joint supervision and international agreements” section details the extensive network of international partnerships. The “Current training programme” and “Planned training programme” sections list the activities currently taking place and those organised for the future, while both are then detailed in the section “Seminars”. The “Databases” section explains how to access the numerous bibliographic resources available to PhD students. Finally, to benefit prospective PhD students, examination papers from recent years are provided in a separate section.