Group

Pietro is an historian of science and philosophy and a professor of the philosophy of science. His research focuses on science, philosophy, and literature in early modernity, as well as on historical epistemology. His work encompasses the ontological and epistemological premises of medieval and early-modern natural philosophy and science up to the rise of mechanical visions of the world. Moreover, he has investigated the history of cosmology and physics, in particular post-Copernican astronomy, mechanics, and physico-mathematics. His inquiry into the history of science expands upon the wide cultural interconnections of early scientific debates as well as upon their socio-institutional embedment. His work on historical epistemology focuses on political epistemology along Gramscian lines of investigation. It comprises a critical assessment of the agendas underlying the historiography of science.

For his curriculum vitae and publications, see his profile on the University webpage.

Rodolfo is a historian of philosophy and of science. After his PhD (2015), he held postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and at the Université du Quebéc à Trois-Rivières and, as adjunct lecturer, at Bard College Berlin as well as at the University of Turin. His current research foci are: the cross-use of concepts between physics, biology, and metaphysics in the early modern period, on which he is preparing a volume exploring the history of the concept of conatus (“endeavor”) between late-Scholastic and modern science and philosophy and the critical investigation of the emergence of, and correlation between, modern race theories and criminology. 

Corinna is a historian of science specializing in the development of 18 th century chemistry (with a focus on the South of Italy) and of natural disasters.
She is a graduate in Philosophy at the University of Bari (Italy), where also she obtained her Ph.D. in the History of Science and Technology. From 2011 to 2013, she was a post-doc fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici and later at the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. In 2016, she was a post-doc researcher in Paris at the Centre A. Koyré (EHESS-CNRS-MNHN) and until 2018 was an Honorary Research Associate at the University College London. In this post-doc phase her research was focused on Mount Vesuvius as natural laboratory.
Corinna is also Associate Researcher at the LabEx HASTEC (EPHE-PSL) - Laboratoire d'Excellence Histoire, Anthropologie, Savoirs, Techniques et Croyances (France) and her first book, “Lavoisier e Parthenope” (Naples 2017), was awarded the Prize for Young Historians by the International Academy of the History of Science.
The focus of her research project in the framework of EarlyGeoPraxis group is the "Knowledge Transformations in Geology: A Comparative Inquiry".

Giovanni is a PhD student working on the ontological, epistemological and anthropological aspects concerning the idea of Anthropocene. He graduated in Philosophy (BA) at the University of Trento (2018) and then in Philosophical Sciences (MA) at the University of Bologna (2021) with a thesis dedicated to the relationship between history and nature in Alexandre Kojève and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophies. His interests span between philosophy of nature and cosmology, political ecology and anthropology of nature.
In the context of EarlyGeoPraxis group, he will work on the concept of “transcendental geology” in order to study and deepen the connections between geology and ontology in the Epoch of Anthropocene.

Xenia is a jurist and socio-legal scholar, working primarily on law and social struggles. She is a FARE project postdoctoral researcher and affiliated scholar of the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry. She is the author of "Governare il conflitto. La criminalizzazione del movimento No Tav" (Meltemi, Milano 2019), an ethnography of the political trials against activists of one of the most important and longstanding environmental movements in Europe, and an empirical critique of the criminal law used against social struggles. Her current project deals with ecology and law, and interrogates the legal imagination in the service of environmental catastrophes and climate breakdown. Her most recent publications include articles on the conceptualization of the environment, the role of legal mobilization, new instituting practices, and a critique of new ecological proposals such as ecocide. She initiated and co-curate the inaugural summer school on the concept of biodiversity [ITA], funded by IISF. The title of her research project at Ca’ Foscari is “Towards a cosmic law: for ecosystem rights”.

Omar is a historian and philosopher of science interested on the introduction and development of European thought, mainly Renaissance humanism, in the Ibero-American multicultural world. More specifically, he recovers the complex interrelationships between natural, religious and political notions in the conceptualization of the skies and territories in the Americas, especially in New Spain. At the same time, he has studied the history of civil engineering in Mexico, analysing the different interests behind public works. Currently, his research focuses on the study of the particularities of knowledge and practices in multicultural societies and its implications for their environments. More specifically, he analyses the environment alterations in the Americas under Hispanic rule as one of the first instances of the Anthropocene. His research in the EarlyGeoPraxis group focuses in “The Dispute for the Environment in the Valley of Mexico”.

Krešimir obtained a doctorate in Classics at the University of Oxford. He was Lecturer at Oxford's Faculty of Classics, Rome Fellow of the British School at Rome and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at LMU Munich. He is strongly interested in environmental humanities and ecocriticism and ways in which they can provide valuable lessons in current global crises. He is currently studying the fluvial environment of the Venetian lagoon in late antiquity and writing a book entitled The Living Streams: Rivers as More-than-Human Entities in the Ancient World for the series Cambridge Elements in Environmental Humanities (Cambridge University Press).He is also a specialist in Roman religion and mythology and has published widely on these topics in journals and edited volumes (OUP, CUP). He has recently published a book Wolves of Rome: The Lupercalia from Roman and Comparative Perspectives (Walter de Gruyter, 2023) on the role of non-human animals in Rome's most enduring festival.

Silvia is an expert in European funding and Euro-planning, as well as in project management and implementation. She holds a degree in Marine Environmental Sciences (2000) from the “Ca’ Foscari” Università di Venezia, and since 2001 she has worked on European funding for public bodies such as municipalities, research institutes/universities, as well as civil regions and private companies. She has extensive experience in project/partnership coordination and management, and in providing technical and financial assistance for the project leaders and associates.