PhD Anthropology and Epistemology Scholarships at University of Bergamo, Italy

Ph.D. School in Anthropology and Epistemology of Complexity

The research activity of the Ph.D. Programme in Anthropology and Epistemology of Complexity as well as of the Centre for Research on the Anthropology and Epistemology of Complexity addresses a number of major research foci: human identity as part of a wider reflection on Nature; planetary history in a ecological perspective;ù the understanding of history and of the main changes in scientific and philosophical thinking; the analysis of globalization processes; the study of Europe; the exploration of urban and metropolitan spaces; the interest in information technologies; the reflection on the new frontiers of the sacred, violence and war.

Main research lines draw a plurality of transdisciplinary intersections showing that knowledge complexity is first of all the acknowledgment of Nature complexity, which cannot be reduced to any pre-ordinate paradigm.

Modern occidental thinking is essentially based on principles of reduction, abstraction and division re-proposing the military principle of divide et impera (divide and rule). It separated and still separates Nature processes from knowledge ones by favouring the study of minimal unites and system parts without allowing us to approach the hard understanding of solidarities, intersections and mutual implications from which such minimal unities derive as non-elementary complex elements. Disciplinary divisions and the overspecialization of academic disciplines that are still dominating our western culture show the fragmentation of our way of thinking and its consequent forms of dominance of man over man, of man over woman, as well as of man over other species and over Nature. Modern scientific tradition has bequeathed to us a schematic and reductionist way of thinking unable to conceive the complexity of Nature and human beings in its multiple dimensions at different levels.

The scientific revolutions of the XX Century - the revolution of relativity and quantum as well as of chaos and information - have shown a new possible perspective of study within contemporary sciences and the opportunity to overcome the division between human and natural sciences moving towards what is called a "New Alliance".

The challenge of complexity is to reunify what the modern thinking has contributed to divide, by showing the crucial importance of the inextricable networks of reciprocal connections among processes that have been arbitrarily separated and isolated by the modern scientific tradition. Complex thinking attempts to favour a kind of knowledge able to critically reflect upon itself, to understand its own limits and to be open to and respectful of ethnic and cultural alterities, by definitively overcoming a kind of scientific knowledge that considered itself to be absolute in order to state western superiority and legitimize its dominance as well. The understanding of complexity involves indeed a new ethic perspective that is based on novel forms of planetary and cosmic solidarity moving away from modern cultural religious, ethnic as well as gender and species differences.

The Ph.D. Programme in Anthropology and Epistemology of Complexity was launched in 2002 at the University of Bergamo within the University system planning for the three-year period 2001-2003 (D.M. 8.5.2001, art.12 – Corsi di dottorato e attività di ricerca avanzata).

• Director of the Research Centre and the Ph.D. Programme (since July 2008): Prof. Enrico Giannetto
• Prof. Mauro Ceruti directed the Ph.D. Programme from 2002 to 2008
• Prof. Gianluca Bocchi was the Scientific Coordinator of the Ph.D. Programme from 2002 to 2006

Secretary

Dott.ssa Amelia Lausetti
e-mail: amelia.lausetti@unibg.it
address: piazzale S. Agostino 2 - 24129 Bergamo
tel.: +39 035-2052924
fax: +39 035-2052916
office hours: Monday - Friday, h 10-11 a.m.