Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

MSCA 2025 results published: three Marie Curie fellowships awarded to Unimore with funding from the European Union

The European Commission has published the results of the 2025 call for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships, part of Horizon Europe. These fellowships are among the most prestigious and competitive postdoctoral funding opportunities launched by the Commission. This year, 1,610 postdoctoral researchers were funded, with a total budget of €404.3 million, selected from 17,066 proposals—an overall success rate of 9.6 per cent. The funded projects involve almost 80 nationalities and will be carried out in 45 countries across Europe and beyond.

Against this backdrop, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia has obtained funding for three fellowships, for projects spanning cultural and political history, religious studies, the history of ideas, network analysis, and digital humanities. The result brings to Modena and Reggio Emilia a group of outstanding postdoctoral researchers selected through a European process centred on international mobility, advanced training, and the creation of scientific networks linking universities, archives and research groups. These efforts are expected to strengthen skills, methodologies and connections that remain valuable well beyond the duration of each project.

Two of the three fellowships are hosted by the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies and the DHMoRe Centre, with three-year projects that connect Unimore to leading North American universities and place major themes at the centre of inquiry—from the European circulation of poetic forms and performance practices between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the redefinition of political and cultural categories linked to Zionism in the interwar period, explored through archives, periodicals, networks of individuals and exchanges of ideas.

The first project, ExTEMPORE, aims to reconstruct systematically the spread of modern poetic improvisation in Europe from the second half of the eighteenth century to the early decades of the nineteenth. It will draw on extensive work with travel accounts, correspondence, essays and articles relating to performances and performers in Italy, Germany, France and England, with attention to identity, gender and social status. A key objective is the creation of a structured repertory of references, data and case studies. The research design also includes the use of digital tools to produce an interactive map tracing performances and the movements of key figures over space and time, highlighting the important role played by female improvisers. The fellowship runs for 36 months, with a total budget of €341,683.08, and involves Unimore as host in collaboration with the University of Toronto, with a secondment period at Universität Basel. The Unimore supervisor is Prof Matteo Al Kalak.

“The ExTEMPORE project,” comments Prof Matteo Al Kalak, “forms part of the international initiatives promoted by the DHMoRe Digital Humanities Research Centre and the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies. The selected researcher will focus on rediscovering and enhancing the circulation of literary practices and improvisation in the late modern period.”

The second project obtained by the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies and the DHMoRe Centre addresses the theme ‘Humanism and Nationalism: Reconsidering Zionism after the First World War, 1918–1938 (NatHum)’. It aims to build a broad interpretative framework for the various Zionisms of the interwar years, examined through the lens of global networks, mobility, and the circulation of ideas and actors between Europe, the United States and Mandate Palestine. The project adopts an extensive comparative approach to archival sources and periodicals, with a critical perspective informed by post-colonial studies and transnational history, to show how the mobility of people and ideas contributed to shaping theories, practices and alternative political options within Zionist debates during the 1920s and 1930s. This fellowship also spans 36 months, with a total budget of €396,991.08, and brings Unimore together with Yale University. The Unimore supervisor is Prof Maria Chiara Rioli.

“The NatHum project,” notes Prof Maria Chiara Rioli, “aims to contribute to historical studies on Zionisms in a transnational perspective—work that is particularly important for understanding contemporary politics in Palestine and Israel—through scientific collaboration between Unimore and Yale.” The ExTEMPORE and NatHum projects also reinforce the European research profile of the Department and the DHMoRe Centre, which last year secured two Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowships.

The third fellowship awarded concerns the Department of Education and Human Sciences and is entitled ThomUS – ‘The Thomist Connection: Conversion, Culture, and Civilization in US Higher Education (1930s–1950s)’. The project examines the migration of Neo-Thomism from Europe to North America in the mid-twentieth century and follows intellectual and religious conversions within Catholic university circles, as well as the emergence of a ‘new humanism’ conceived as a cultural response to dominant currents of the time. Within this framework, the project also analyses the Great Books movement associated with Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago, its subsequent influence on figures such as Otto Bird within the University of Notre Dame’s Program for Liberal Studies launched in 1950, and the role of prominent converts such as Allen Tate. The programme’s partner institution is the University of Notre Dame. The scientific lead is Dr Luca Ferracci, with Prof Andrea Mariuzzo serving as supervisor. The fellowship has a total budget of €420,751.08.

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome,” says Prof Andrea Mariuzzo, “which recognises the quality of the research Luca Ferracci has long pursued in this field, and confirms the relevance of the topic. While the transnational intellectual mobility that shapes the circulation of ideas has long been central to scholarship, research on US Catholic culture today offers insights whose significance extends beyond the purely academic domain; that milieu has produced both leading figures of the so-called Trump coalition and the current pontiff.”

Taken together, the three fellowships outline a coherent profile of humanities and historical-cultural projects able to operate on an international scale, working with archives, sources and tools that require robust methodological frameworks and a network of partner institutions. They extend Unimore’s presence in leading academic contexts and, at the same time, enhance its ability to attract postdoctoral researchers through mobility and collaboration pathways that Europe identifies as strategically important.

Categorie: International - english, Notizie_eng