Steven Vertovec is the Founding Director at the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and Honorary Professor of Sociology and Ethnology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Previously, he was Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the University of Oxford, and Director of the British Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS). Steve’s work involves the critical examination of several concepts surrounding international migration, transnational social formations, ethnic diasporas, and contexts of urban diversity. His education includes a B.A. (Magna cum laude) in Anthropology and Religious Studies from the University of Colorado, an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. In 2018, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Social Sciences) by the Université de Liège. Steve is currently Co-Editor of the journal Global Networks and Co-Editor of the Palgrave book series “Global Diversities”. He is also the author of five books, including “Transnationalism” (Routledge, 2009) and “Diversity and Contact” (Palgrave 2016), and is Editor or Co-Editor of 35 volumes, including “Islam in Europe” (Macmillan, 1997), “Conceiving Cosmopolitanism” (Oxford University Press, 2003), “The Multicultural Backlash” (Routledge 2010), “The International Handbook of Diversity Studies” (Routledge, 2015), and “The Oxford Handbook of Super-diversity” (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). For over 25 years, Steve has engaged with a range policy-makers, including the Expert Council of German Foundations on Migration and Integration, the UK government’s Cabinet Office and Home Office, the European Commission, the G8, the World Bank, and UNESCO.


 

Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in Biella in 1933. He began to exhibit his work in 1955 and in 1960 he had his first solo show at Galleria Galatea in Turin. An inquiry into self- portraiture characterizes his early work. In the two-year period 1961-1962 made the first Mirror Paintings, which directly include the viewer and real time in the work, and open up perspective, reversing the Renaissance perspective that had been closed by the twentieth- century avant-gardes. These works quickly brought Pistoletto international acclaim, leading, in the sixties, to one-man shows in important galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. The Mirror Paintings are the foundation of his subsequent artistic output and theoretical thought. In 1965 and 1966 he produced a set of works entitled Minus Objects, considered fundamental to the birth of Arte Povera, an art movement of which Pistoletto was an animating force and a protagonist. In 1967 he began to work outside traditional exhibition spaces, with the first instances of that “creative collaboration” he developed over the following decades by bringing together artists from different disciplines and diverse sectors of society. In 1975-76 he presented a cycle of twelve consecutive exhibitions, Le Stanze, at the Stein Gallery in Turin. This was the first of a series of complex, year-long works called “time continents”. Others are White Year (1989) and Happy Turtle (1992). In 1978, in a show in Turin, Pistoletto defined two main directions his future artwork would take: Division and Multiplication of the Mirror and Art Takes On Religion. In the early eighties he made a series of sculptures in rigid polyurethane, translated into marble for his solo show in 1984 at Forte di Belvedere in Florence. From 1985 to 1989 he created the series of “dark” volumes called Art of Squalor. During the nineties, with Project Art and with the creation in Biella of Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto and the University of Ideas, he brought art into active relation with diverse spheres of society with the aim of inspiring and producing responsible social change. In 2003 he won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifelong Achievement. In 2004 the University of Turin awarded him a laurea honoris causa in Political Science. On that occasion the artist announced what has become the most recent phase of his work, Third Paradise. In 2007, in Jerusalem, he received the Wolf Foundation Prize in the Arts, “for his constantly inventive career as an artist, educator and activist whose restless intelligence has created prescient forms of art that contribute to fresh understanding of the world. In 2010 he wrote the essay The Third Paradise, published in Italian, English, French and German. In 2012 he started promoting the Rebirth-day, first worldwide day of rebirth, celebrated every year on 21st December with initiatives taking place all around the world. In 2013 the Louvre in Paris hosted his personal exhibition Michelangelo Pistoletto, année un – le paradis sur terre. In this same year he received the Praemium Imperiale for painting, in Tokyo. In May 2015 he received a degree honoris causa from the Universidad de las Artes of Havana in Cuba. In the same year he realizes a work of big dimensions, called Rebirth, situated in the park of the Palais des Nations in Geneva, headquarters of the UN.

 

Victoria Ateca - Amestoy is Associate Professor in Economics at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in Bilbao, Spain. She has designed and managed cultural projects, and conducts research on cultural participation, digitization and societal impact of culture. She has published research papers in Economics Bulletin, The Journal of Socio Economics, Journal of Cultural Economics, Social Indicators Research, Journal of Happiness Studies and European Journal of Operational Research, and has contributed to handbooks on social indicators, on the economics of leisure and on the economics of cultural heritage. She has also coordinated international and national research projects on the determinants of cultural participation, on cultural statistics, and on the economic and social impact of cultural projects. She has contributed to the HERITAGE-PRO design of interdisciplinary training modules for heritage professionals (https://heritage- pro.eu/training-module/), to Managing Arts Projects with Societal Impact (www.mapsi.eu), and has edited a handbook on Cultural participation. 

Tally Katz - Gerro joined the University of Manchester as Research Fellow in the Sustainable Consumption Institute and Reader in Sociology in September 2016. My research addresses scholarship conducted at the crossroads of consumption, culture, environment, and inequality, with a strong emphasis on cross-national and cross-time comparisons. Recently I served for two terms as member of the executive committee and treasurer of the European Sociological Association; I was vice-president of the Israel Sociological Society; I co-founded a section on environment and society within the Israeli Sociological Society and I was co-coordinator of the Israel branch of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI). In the past few years I was invited as visiting professor in several universities, including the Department of Economic Sociology in Turku, where I was also appointed adjunct professor; Kyung-Hee University in Seoul; Science Po in Paris; ENSAE in Paris; University of Innsbruck and others. I was recently appointed as co-editor-in-chief of Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media, and the Arts.

 

 

Marco Martiniello (born October 15, 1960) is an Italian-Belgian sociologist and political scientist. He teaches sociology of migration and ethnic relations at the University of Liège. He is currently research director at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS), and the director of the Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM), as well as Vice-Dean for Research at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Liège. Martiniello holds a B.A. in sociology from the University of Liège and a Ph.D. in social and political sciences from the European University Institute in Florence. He specializes in migration studies, ethnicity, multiculturalism, racism and citizenship in the European Union and in Belgium, and he is the author, editor or co-editor of numerous articles, book chapters, reports and books on these themes. His current research focuses on the integration, political participation and mobilization of immigrant minorities through the arts in super-diverse cities across the world (Belgium, Italy, South Africa, Australia and USA). Along his career, Martiniello has held numerous visiting appointments at New York University, Columbia University, Malmö University, City University of New York, University of Geneva,University of Kwazulu-Natal, University of Queensland, etc. Besides academic achievements, Martiniello was also awarded with important civic distinctions including the honorary citizenship of the city of Liège in 2015, and the knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy in 2017. 

 

Yudhishthir Raj Isar’s professional life has straddled various domains of cultural theory and practice, notably cultural policy. He is currently Education Director at the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. An international civil servant at UNESCO from 1973 to 2002, Isar was notably Director of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture, Executive Secretary of the World Commission on Culture and Development and Director of Cultural Policies for Development. As regards his academic life since 2002, Isar is Emeritus Professor at The American University of Paris, where he was Professor of Cultural Policy Studies from 2002 to 2018. In 2018-19, he was a Distinguished Scholar at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, Italy and Visiting Professor with the Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University, India.‘Eminent Research Visitor’ at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University (2011-2013) and Visiting Adjunct Professor (2014-2016). Earlier, he was Maître de conférence at the Institut d’Études Politiques, Paris (2005-2010). Isar was also the founding co-editor of the 5-volume Cultures and Globalization Series, published by SAGE (2007 to 2012). He was the lead writer for the United Nations Creative Economy Report 2013. Widening Local Development Pathways and edited UNESCO’s reports (2015 and 2018) on the implementation of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions entitled Re|Shaping Cultural Policies. In 2013- 14 he was team leader of the European Union’s inquiry on ‘Culture in EU External Relations’, and the principal author of its 2014 report Engaging the World: Towards Global Cultural Citizenship.In 2004-2008, he served as president of the European arts and culture platform Culture Action Europe and has been a board member of several cultural organizations. Born in India, educated in India and France in the fields of economics, sociology and cultural anthropology, Isar is a French citizen and lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

Wiebke Sievers is migration researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna as well as guest-researcher and lecturer at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. Her research concentrates on migration and culture in Austria and in international comparison, with her main interest being in literature. However, she also works on theatre, cultural policies and the financing of culture. Her other research foci include literary translation and the internationalisation of literature. She is a member of the Executive Board of the largest research network in the field of migration studies IMISCOE and directs together with Marco Martiniello the IMISCOE Standing Committee DIVCULT (Superdiversity, Migration and Cultural Change). Recent publications
Scale Shifting: New Insights into Global Literary Circulation, Special issue of the Journal of World Literature (2020, with Peggy Levitt)
"From Monolingualism to Multilingualism? The Pre- and Post-monolingual Condition in the Austrian Literary Field", in Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation-State, ed. by Áine McMurtry and Deborah Holmes (Austrian Studies, 26), 2019, 40-56.
Immigrant and ethnic minority writers since 1945: fourteen national contexts in Europe and beyond (2018, with Sandra Vlasta).
Diversity incorporation in the cultural policy mainstream: Exploring the main frameworks and approaches bridging cultural and migration studies, Special issue of the journal Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 8, 1, 2017 (with Marco Martiniello and Ricard Zapata-Barrero)
“Mainstage theatre and immigration: The long history of exclusion and recent attempts at diversification in Berlin and Vienna”, Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 8, 1, 2017, 67-83.

 

Andrea Ricci is a graduate student in International Sciences at the University of Turin. He is interested in the governance of migration and multi-level governance. His research focuses on the impact of migration governance on immigrants integration and the facilitation that could occur if the implementation of integration practices follow innovative ways of development. He is the tutor for the Economics of Migration in Europe (ECOMEUR) course of the "European Migration Studies" Jean Monnet Chair. Currently, he is working on the 'Coro BAC project': he will draft a literature review aimed at grounding the project basis on solid scientific findings. The "BAC Choir" will explore women's creativity through singing and theatre, providing an opportunity to meet with women of different cultures and languages, promoting their wellbeing and vocal talents. This paper draws particular attention to group singing and chorus's capacity to develop soft skills that foreigners can spend in the destination country's labour market.

 

 

 

 

 

COCUMINT 2021-22

Marinella Senatore is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is characterised by a strong participatory dimension and a constant dialogue between history, popular culture and social structures. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout Italy and abroad, including: Manifesta 12; Centre Pompidou; MAXXI Museum; Queens Museum; Kunsthaus Zurich; Castello di Rivoli; Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen; Palais de Tokyo; Schirn Kunsthalle; Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago; High Line, NY; Madre Museum; Faena Art Forum; Bozar; Kunstverein Ar/Ge Kunst; Petach Tikva Museum; Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation; Serpentine Gallery; CCA Tel Aviv; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; ICA, Richmond; BAK Utrecht; Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo Palazzo Grassi; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Moderna Museet; UABB Bi Shenzhen; Biennale de Lyon; Thessaloniki Biennale; Liverpool Biennale; Shiryaevo Biennale; Athens Biennale; Havana Biennale; Göteborg Biennial; Contour – Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen; Bienal de Cuenca; 54th Venice Biennale «ILLUMinations».  Marinella Senatore is the winner of the 4th edition of Italian Council; Art Grant, Dresden; MAXXI Prize; Castello di Rivoli, Fellowship; The American Academy in Rome Fellowship; The New York Prize; Dena Foundation Fellowship. 

 

Giuliana Setari Carusi is an Italian contemporary art collector and a major figure in the international art world. After many years in Brussels, New York and Milan, she currently lives between Paris and Brussels. Together with her husband Tommaso Setari she started in the early 80s collecting contemporary art: their collection is now well known internationally. She is the founding President of the non-profit charity organization Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art. She is also president of Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto. Cittadellarte's activities have the objective of bringing artistic intervention into every sector of civil society in order to contribute to addressing the profound epochal mutations underway.

 

 

 

 

 

Berndt Clavier is a senior lecturer at The School of Art and Communication at Malmö University, Sweden. Recently, he has finished a research project financed by the Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences in Sweden on the governmentalization of art in the twentieth century. For this project, he has published on how the aesthetic was made expedient in the latter half of the last century. This work includes essays on the dispositif of art’s management, the historical ontology of cultural policy, the cascading metrologies of cultural policy, and the peculiar forms of racialization that attend this new statified aesthetic. This last direction, on the relationship between art, aesthetics, and questions concerning population, is also his current primary focus. Outside of his work on cultural policy, he publishes on literature, most recently on the work of August Strindberg and John Barth.

 

 

 

Hillel Rapoport is Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. A member of Bar- Ilan University’s Economic Department until 2013, he also held visiting positions at Stanford University (in 2001-03) and Harvard University (in 2009-11). Since 2008 he is the scientific coordinator of the "migration and development" conferences jointly organized by the French Development Agency and the World Bank. He received the Milken Institute Award in 2003 and the Developing Countries Prize in 2008. His research focuses on the growth and developmental impact of migration. As part of this research program he has done theoretical and empirical work on the brain drain, remittances, the effect of migration on inequality and educational attainments, and the links between migration and other dimensions of globalization such as trade, capital flows, and culture. His other research interests include economic history, political economy, refugee resettlement/relocation, and the economics of immigration and diversity.  He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in June 2013 

 

Peggy Levitt is Chair and Professor of Sociology and the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies at Wellesley College and an Associate at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She is also the co-founder of the Global (De)Centre. Her latest book, Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display was published by the University of California Press in July of 2015, about which Publishers Weekly had this to say: In this diligent international study, Levitt uses a series of case studies to evaluate how museums are adapting to the new global environment, which is marked by rapid immigration and social change. Levitt sets up some revealing comparisons among institutions. ...an illuminating study that will be of interest to academics and museum professionals working in the field today. She is currently writing two books: Move Over, Mona Lisa. Move Over, Jane Eyre. She looks at cultural inequality and what we can do about by studying how artists and writers from what have been culturally peripheral countries get recognized on the global cultural stage. Her second book project, co-authored with Erica Dobbs, Ruxandra Paul, and Ken Sun examines transnational social protection or how migrants and their families provide for themselves outside the framework of the nation-state and transform social welfare as we know it.Other projects include a forthcoming co-edited special volume, with Wiebke Sievers, of The Journal of World Literature, on the circulation of writers from the Global South and a co-edited special volume of The Journal of the International Cultural Policy on cultural policies and cultural politics in Global South cities with Anna Triandafyllidou, Jeremie Molho, and Nicholas Dines.

Amin Moghadam’s research explores ways in which the dynamics of space production in global cities intersect with the politics of housing and home making by emphasizing the role they play in migration trajectories and transnational practices, as well as in processes of class formation and integration in the host society. Amin holds a PhD in Human Geography and Urban Studies from the University of Lyon II, France. His research and publications have focused on migration policy and practices, diaspora studies, circulation and regional integration in the Middle East, with focus on the Persian Gulf region (Iran and UAE). Amin acted as an associate research scholar at the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University between 2016-2020. Prior to this position, he lectured on Urban and Migration Studies at Sciences Po Paris, Aix-Marseille University and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco). In addition to research and teaching, he took on the role of academic advisor for the Master of Public Affairs program at Sciences Po in Paris and consulted for several organizations such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi and UNHCR. 

 

Gustavo De Santis is Professor of Demography at the University of Florence. He is a member of the most important scientific associations, he is currently the Italian Representative at the UN Commission on Population and Development (New York), he is the President of the Scientific Council of the INED (Paris), and co-Director of the Florence School on Euro-Mediterranean Migration and Development, organized by the University of Florence and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (Florence). He is the President of the cultural association “Neodemos” , and chief editor of the website N-IUSSP. Referee for several leading journals (Ageing and Society, Cahiers québécois de démographie, Demographic Research, European Journal of Population, Genus, Population, Population and Development Review, Population et société, Social Indicators Research, ...) he is especially interested in the study of pension systems. 

 

Raffaele Caterina is Professor of Private Law at the University of Turin since 2005, after having been a researcher at the same University.He was Director of the Department of Legal Sciences from 2007 to 2012; member of the Academic Senate from 2010 to 2015; Chairman of the Scientific Research Committee of the Academic Senate from 2012 to 2015. From 2015 to 2018, he was a component of the Nucleo di Valutazione of the University of Turin. In 2018 he was elected Director of the Department of Law for the three-year period 2018-2021.His main research interests concern the contribution of cognitive science to legal studies. He edited the first Italian book on the topic (I fondamenti cognitivi del diritto, Bruno Mondadori, 2008). In recent times, his studies have focused mainly on the relevance of tacit knowledge in the field of law. In 2015, he edited a special issue of Intelligent Systems on La dimensione socialedella conoscenza tacita. As a civilist, his interests have focused mainly on property and possession law; personal law; and consumer law. Since 2010, he is a member of the Editorial Board of Giurisprudenza Italiana. Among his monographs, we mention in particular: Il possesso, Giuffré, 2014 (with R. Sacco); Le persone fisiche, Giappichelli, 2012; Storie di locazioni e di fantasmi, Rubbettino, 2011; Usufrutto, uso, abitazione, superficie, UTET, 2009. 
 

Sergio Foa' is Full Professor of Administrative Law (IUS/10) at the University of Turin, Department of Law. He is the delegate of the Rector of the University of Turin to the Coordination of the University legal issues. He is Director of the Master of II level "Public Administration Law", at the University of Turin. He is also Director of the Master Course in Data Protection Law for the training of the data protection officer at the University of Turin. He is Representative of the Legal Area in the Academic Senate of the University of Turin and component of the Council of the Department of Law. 

 

 

Gianmaria Ajani since 1996 is Full Professor of Comparative Private Law at the University of Turin, of which he is Rector since October 2013. He has been Director of the Department of Legal Sciences from 1998 to 2004, Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2009 to 2013, member of the Academic Senate, and Director of the Department of Law from 2012 to 2013. Honorary Professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, People's Republic of China. Expert for UNDP in a series of projects to train the administration of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in preparation for WTO accession, 2000. Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Law and State of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1982 and at Leiden University in 1983, 1985, 1987. Visiting Professor at the Universdity of California, School Law, Berkeley in 1988, 1995 and 1997 (Fall Terms). Scientific collaborator on legal reform in post-socialist countries for various international organizations (International Monetary Fund, Council of Europe, OSCE, European Commission - TACIS projects) with particular reference to the Russian Federation, the Czech Republic and Albania (in both cases with regard to the recodification of civil law), and more recently to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Lao People's Republic. Expert for MAE on the occasion of the Italian Presidency of the OSCE in relation to an international dispute on the status of autonomy of the Republic of Crimea, 1994.
 

Andrea Montanari as from February 2020, he has held the chair of Associate Professor of Private Law at the Universitas Mercatorum of Rome and, since 2013, he has been “Cultore della materia” in Legal Informatics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. He is also a lawyer registered with the Rome Bar since 2009. For several years he collaborated with the chair of Private Law at the Università Roma Tre where he graduated with honours. After obtaining a PhD in Private Law at the Università di Palermo, he was Researcher of Private Law in the Department of Economics, Business and Statistics at the same University, where he held courses in Private Law and Private Law of Economy. He has carried out research activity also abroad, for example, he was Visiting PhD Student at the University of Warwick (UK), he took part in the research project “Preserving historic buildings” funded by the London School of Economics & Political Science and was selected as a “Bluebook Trainee” by the European Commission in Brussels (DG for Informatics). He published two books and numerous scientific articles in national and international journals. Together with other colleagues he founded the scientific journal “Art and Law” published by Giuffré- Lefebvre. 

 

 

COCUMINT 2022-2023

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (born December 2, 1957, in Ridgewood, New Jersey, US) is an Italian- American writer, art historian and exhibition maker. She is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence.[1]Currently, she is the Director ofCastello di RivoliMuseo d'Arte Contemporanea and Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti in Turin. She was Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University (2013-2019).  Named 2012’s most powerful person in the art world by ArtReview’s Power 100 listings,[2] Christov- Bakargiev was Artistic Director of dOCUMENTA (13) which opened in Kassel on June 9, 2012, holding workshops, seminars and exhibitions in Alexandria, Egypt; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Banff, Canada.  Her stewardship of dOCUMENTA(13), considered to be one of the most intellectual and significant exhibitions in the art world, renewed one of the exhibition’s primal intentions to enlist culture as an agent of reconstruction, healing and dialogue. 

Giuliana Setari Carusi is an Italian contemporary art collector and a major figure in the international art world. After many years in Brussels, New York and Milan, she currently lives between Paris and Brussels. Together with her husband Tommaso Setari she started in the early 80s collecting contemporary art: their collection is now well known internationally. She is the founding President of the non-profit charity organization Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art which organized also residential program for artists and curators at the Centre International d’Accueil et d’Echanges des Récollets in Paris, and at the Omi International Arts Center in New York. She is also president of Città dell’Arte Fondazione Pistoletto. Città dell’arte's activities have the objective of bringing artistic intervention into every sector of civil society in order to contribute to addressing the profound epochal mutations underway. She has been membre of the jury of international prix: Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, La Seine à l’ENSBA, Prix Marcel Duchamps, Le Pavillon du Palais de Tokyo, (Paris), Thalie Art Foundation, Hisk, Higher Institute for Fine Art, Belgian Art Prize (Bruxelles). She is Patron of the Bozart and friend of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contempory Art which she supports for specific projects which favour inclusive cultural exchanges. 

Founder, owner, director of Summerhall, Edinburgh - Europe's biggest private multi-arts complex with 650 spaces. Over 1,300 shows and events per year, 4,000 performances, and 750,000 visitors/attendees. Major venue for art and theatre during Edinburgh festival. Summerhall presents festival arts all year round. 400 people work at Summerhall including in technology incubator TechCube with many successful firms like 1 partcarbon, CamelAudio, Hacklab, also home for Scotland's UN office. Studios, labs, offices for artists and arts organisations, including Demarco European Art Foundation, Children's Parliament, Puppet Animation, Artiscience. Also, on site a cafe, gastro-pub "Royal Dick", Barneys brewery, Pickering's distillery and Coco chocolatier. See summerhall.co.uk, techcu.be, and summerhall.tv. Artist economist/ business consultant. Member AUGUR, with largest model of world economy, modelling policy forecasts for all part of the world for next 30 years. See augur project.eu Expert in banking & macroeconomics. Risk Management & financial economics Guru: adviser to large banks, regulators, others re. macro-economic & macro-prudential models, strategies and systems. 

In October 2012, she was appointed as Chairwoman of the “MAXXI Foundation - the Italian National Centre for contemporary art, architecture and design” (www.fondazionemaxxi.it). Took over the leadership of the museum also with executive functions. Since 2012, she is founder and Chairwoman of “Human Foundation - working for venture philanthropy and social finance” (www.humanfoundation.org), which promotes a new model of social economy in support of social business and social finance in Italy. Muhammad Yunus, Jacques Attali, John Podesta, Gunter Pauli, Bunker Roy, Stefano Zamagni, Massimo Recalcati, Enrico Giovannini, Aldo Bonomi, Francesco Starace, are some of the members of the Advisory Board of the Foundation. From 1988 to 1994 she was Head of the International Office of Legambiente, coordinator of the Scientific Committee and a member of the National Secretariat. From 1988 to 1993 she oversaw the Annual Report on the state of the environment “Ambiente italia”. In 1990 she was a member of the Italian delegation to the Bergen Conference on sustainable development, organized by the Norwegian Prime Minister, Mrs. Brundtland. She was a member of the Italian delegation to the UN Rio de Janeiro summit in 1992 on Environment and Development. On that occasion she supervised the preparatory works of the Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biodiversity. From 1983 to 1987, she worked for the Montedison Research Center, coordinating a research group on industrial policy and technological innovation. 

Eleftherios Giovanis studied economics at the University of Thessaly. He completed the M.Sc. in Applied Economics and Finance at the University of Macedonia and the M.Sc. in Quality Assurance at the Hellenic Open University in 2009. He completed his PhD in economics at the Royal Holloway University of London. He was awarded the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Individual Fellowship at the University of Verona in 2015 and worked as an assistant professor in economics at Adnan Menderes University in 2017. He worked as a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Manchester Metropolitan University from January 2018 to January 2021. He was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Adnan Menderes University between October 2019 and October 2021. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Economics at Izmir Bakircay University. 

Sharon Hecker (BA Yale University, MA and PhD University of California at Berkeley) is an art historian and curator who specializes in modern and contemporary Italian art. A leading international authority on Medardo Rosso, she has also written on other key twentieth-century Italian artists such as Lucio Fontana, Luciano Fabro, Francesco Lo Savio, Giuseppe Penone and Marisa Merz, and is the author of numerous edited volumes on themes related to Italian art and visual culture. Hecker has curated exhibitions at museums such as the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Harvard Arts Museums. At the 1990 Venice Biennale she coordinated the U.S. Pavilion for American artist Jenny Holzer, which won the Golden Lion Award. She worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, where she is currently organizing the first museum exhibition devoted to the ceramics of Lucio Fontana (2025). Hecker has also trademarked a method for due diligence for artworks called "The Hecker Standard,” and she teaches at the Universities of Pavia and Milan, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Luiss University in Rome and the University of Zürich. She is a founding member of ICRA (International Catalogue Raisonné Association) and is on the Vetting Committee of the international art fair TEFAF (Maastricht and New York). She coordinates the Expert Witness Pool for the Court of Arbitration for Art (CAFA) in The Hague. 

Laura Castelli is Professor of Private Law in the ‘s degree in Law of the University of Milano and professional lawyer. She is the coordinator of the specialization Master in Art and Law as well at the University of Milan.
She wrote several books in particular - Prescrizione e impedimenti di fatto, Giuffrè, 2018; Disciplina antitrust e illecito civile, Giuffrè, 2012 – and many articles in the filed of prescription, protection of the arts and responsibility of unlawful act. She edited the volume Conversation in Art and Law, Giappichelli, 2021. She also founded the Journal Law and Art. 

 

Cecilia Pennacini, Director of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin, is full professor of Visual Anthropology and African Ethnology in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the same University. Since 1988 she has carried out research in the Great Lakes region of Africa (Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda) as a member of the Italian Ethnological Mission in Equatorial Africa (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation), leading the Mission from 2005 to 2019. She is responsible of the Erasmus Partner Countries program between the University of Turin and Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda) and coordinator of the TOAfrica summer school. She has published extensively on Visual and Museum anthropology as well as on Traditional Religion, Spirit Possession and Cultural Heritage of the African Great Lakes region. She has realized several ethnographic films and scientific programs for RAI, RadioTelevisione Italiana and for other institutions. In 2020 she was awarded with the “Giorgio Maria Sangiorgi” Prize for the History and Ethnology of Africa of the Accademia dei Lincei.