The University of Haifa and the Center for the Research of Peace Education, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Haifa, invite scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds who study urban life and urban landscapes to spend three days of shared learning that focus on cultural and social enterprises amid complex processes of gentrification, exclusion, and regeneration in down town Haifa.
The workshop, located at the harbor campus of the University of Haifa, will include panels on methodology, history, and the politics of cultural production, alongside tours, ethnographic excursions, and cultural entertainment, to allow participants to experiment and discuss ethnographic and semiotic perspectives in urban research.
The Italian delegation
Cristina Demaria is currently Associate Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies of the University of Bologna, where she teaches Semiotics of Conflicts, Semiotics od Media (Master program in Semiotics), Media, Memory and conflicts (Master Program in Eastern European Studies, School of Political Sciences, University of Bologna), and Analysis of Television languages for the BA in Sciences of Communication. She is the coordinator of the MA program in Semiotics, Along with Patrizia Violi and Francesco Mazzucchelli, she is a member of TraMe, the transdiciplinary research group of Cultural Memories and traumas, within which her main areas of expertise are films (documentary and fiction), along with any audiovisual representation of postconflict situations.
Francesco Mazzucchelli is Research Assistant at the Department of Philosophy and Communication of University of Bologna, Scientific Secretary in the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Cultural Memory and Traumas (TraMe), and Adjunct Professor in the same university. He has participated to several international research projects, such as “Terrorscapes. Transnational Memory of Totalitarian Terror and Genocide in Postwar Europe” (funded by NIAS, NWO and AHRC); “Smart Cities and participatory processes” (University of Bologna and PUCSao Paulo); “eiasporas Atlas” (Fondation Maison Sciences de l’Homme). His research interests deal mainly with semiotics, which he applies especially to the study of spatiality and the city, cultural heritage and memory, political discourse, new media and ICT. He is the author of several academic essays and of the book “Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni in ex Jugoslavia” (Bononia University Press, 2010).
Patrizia Violi is Full Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, Department of Communication, and Coordinator of the PhD Program in Semiotics. She is the Director of the School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Bologna, and the Director of TRAME, Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Memory and Cultural Traumas (www.trame.unibo.it), at the University of Bologna. Her main areas of research include text analysis, language and gender, and semantic theory, on which theme she has published numerous articles and volumes, amongst others, Meaning and Experience, Indiana University Press, 2001. She is currently working on cultural semiotics and traumatic memory, in particular on memorials and memory museums. Her last book is Paesaggi della memoria. Il trauma, lo spazio, la storia, Bompiani 2014, currently under translation for Peter Lang.
Isabella Pezzini is professor of philosophy and language theory at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she teaches Semiotics (Semiotics of the city and places of consumption in the Department of Communication and Social Research and Semiotics of Fashion in the course of Sciences of Fashion and Costume at the Department of History, Cultures, Religions). It is part of the College of Graduate in Communication, Research, Innovation. His research focuses on the development of theoretical semiotics, the narrative and textual analysis and discourse, the language of the media, on urban space, with studies on the contemporary forms of expression. Among the most recent publications: Introduction to Barthes (BariRome 2014);
Semiotics of new museums (BariRome 2011); with U. El Eco museum (Madrid2014). Founder and President of LARS, laboratory Roman semiotics. More information on the site www.isabellapezzini.it.
