The training objectives of the PhD Program in “HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, RELIGIONS” are the following:
A. For what concerns the Historical Sciences (Medieval, Early Modern and Modern), priority is given to the professional qualification in all the areas in which historical research is today active, with the goal of training the PhD students up to a level of scientific and methodological awareness that may allow them to work within national and international research institutions. For what concerns the field of methods, the PhD Program aims at attaining a wide and strong integration between theoretical-historiographic elaboration and technical-empirical work (with written and oral sources), together with the necessary improvement of methods in deep investigation on - and skills in working with - manuscript sources (documentary/epigraphic/librarian/epistolary). Formation of PhD students is particularly aimed at analyzing historical change and social and cultural transformations. Training action is based mainly on the need of providing PhD students with a wide historical awareness such as that deriving from the analysis of the links between political action, on one side, and change in economic and social dynamics as well as in mental representations, on the other, in a long duration perspective. Thematic fields of the PhD program (1. Territories, economies and societies; 2. Cultural phenomena: identity, conflicts, exchange; 3. Aspects and transformations of the political culture; 4. Images, symbols and representations of power) may be interrelated in the five different curricula: medieval, modern and contemporary history, religions history and Demoethnoanthropological studies. This scientific training may make it easier the achievement of a second strategic objective which aims at building up a cultural framework fitting professional fields not exclusively academic as it is shown by the statistics concerning the present professional status of several of our PhD graduates.
B. For what concerns Anthropological Sciences, the training objectives of the PhD Program may be summarized as follows: 1. Providing PhD students with an advanced skill in the field of ethnographic research (research design and fieldwork methods) as well as in the theoretical foundations of the Anthropological disciplines; 2. Training highly qualified researchers in society/environment relations with particular reference to cultural/environmental projects of sustainable development; 3. Training highly qualified researchers for projects of conservation and valorization of cultural heritage; 4. Training highly qualified researchers for working in building-capacity projects for indigenous peoples; in advocacy activities; in social, educational and health programs in favour of vulnerable communities.
C. For what concerns the Historical-Religious Sciences, the PhD Program aims at providing the PhD students with the necessary skills for a highly qualified research activity characterized by a strong integration among the various historical-religious sciences. Theoretical and methodological interactions will be developed (e.g. on the relations between religions and cultures; on the epistemological statute of hermeneutic categories; on the function of written tradition in the transmission of knowledge; and s.o.). The PhD Program aims at training researchers with strong historical, philological and hermeneutical skills in the fields of religious studies, as well as with a high professional qualification in all academic fields in which research in the History of Religions and Christianistics is active.
Moreover, the PhD Program in “HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, RELIGIONS” has a strong commitment in pursuing an interdisciplinary perspective including a privileged attention to epistemological and methodological aspects that characterize the dialogue among the historical sciences encompassing anthropology and historical-religious studies.
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