Italy is the 1st European country to export crops irrigated from depleted groundwater sources. JustWATER will uncover exactly where in Italy export-led irrigation agriculture is exploiting the most vulnerable groundwaters and water-scarce areas, identifying bad virtual water GIS hotspots. JustWATER is a research aimed at providing Italian water experts and water decision-makers with a set of tools for informed actions in the realm of the hydro politics of the country. JustWATER connects irrigation patterns to crop-exports trends in Italy, producing GIS maps, graphic charts and socio-economic data to enhance water-related decision-making through virtual water analysis. The novelty of this research is the connection among sub-national levels of analysis (regional and district level) to global virtual water flows, exploring their social and environmental effects and paying attention to gender issues. Exploring the connection between irrigation trends and patterns of agricultural exports will lead to better understanding national water politics in Italy and can be replicated in other drought-prone EU countries.The researcher will get training and knowledge transfer, enhancing her employability and career prospects; the project will enhance the visibility of University of Bergamo in the forefront institutions that are active in both virtual water issues and water & gender enquiry, thanks to the gender-transformative tools enacted by the project. Interdisciplinary in nature, JustWATER will draw upon insights from Human Geography, Political Economy and Political Ecology. Introducing the sub-national scale of analysis constitutes a substantial theoretical innovation in the virtual water literature, which has so far concentrated on the global and national scale. JustWATER will provide policy-oriented tools and end-users data to serve citizen science and open science practices, allowing not only interoperability of research outputs, but also replicability in other countries.

What role did textual exchanges (epistles, journal essays and newspaper articles) between Italian philhellenes and (Italian)-Greek intellectuals refugeed in Italy (due to long-term cultural/political bonds) and Switzerland (as host country for many Greek exiles) play in setting ground for the 1821 Greek Revolution? How did the reflections of these intellectuals on the idea of Greekness, on contemporary historical events and on the illuministic ideas contributed to the process of national identity negotiation underlying the Revolution? Answering these questions is crucial to fully understand the role of the Greek Revolution in shaping modern Europe. HeNaId will offer the first in-depth study of these textual exchanges, focusing on texts by major (Italian-)Greek intellectuals with a focus on the poet Ugo Foscolo as a leading figure among those. While the ideological roots of Greek Revolution are generally studied from historical-philosophical or iconographic perspectives, HeNaId will fill a gap in scholarship by adopting an interdisciplinary approach combining archival and bibliographical research with a philological-literary investigation to 1) map out the political and cultural networks of (Italian)-Greek intellectuals between 18C and 19C across Greece, Italy and Switzerland; 2) study the texts exchanged within these networks to understand their degree of influence; 3) highlight the so-far neglected role played by Foscolo in promoting and orientating these cultural networks. Employed methodologies will be greatly improved through an outgoing phase at the leading Foscolo study group of the University of Fribourg, a secondment at the Laboratory in Italian History and Historiography at the Kapodistrian University of Athens and thanks to the main host University of Bergamo’s commitment to textual criticism. Working at these institutions will deepen my skills in Italian/Neo-Hellenic studies, thus accelerating my career goal of obtaining a tenure at an EU University.

The transition from school to the labour market is a significant milestone in every person's life, marking the path to adulthood, career, and independence. However, this transition may pose challenges for youth, leading them to unemployment. Such experiences not only create economic imbalances in labour markets and increase social tension but also have long-lasting effects on individual well-being. Despite ongoing EU and global efforts, such as the 2020 Recommendation on Bridge to Jobs and SDGs 4 and 8, many young people face difficulties in securing stable employment, especially endangered is youth with vocational qualifications. Existing policies, addressing economic indicators of labour markets, often leave unaddressed real experiences of youth and how national systems of school-to-work transition (STWT) shape these experiences. The project “School-to-Work Transition of Youth with Vocational Qualifications: Cases of Germany and Italy” (TWISTY) addresses these gaps by focusing on biographies of young people navigating or finishing their transitions to stable employment. The project’s novelty lies in contrasting these experiences with policy narratives, identifying mismatches and disclosing overlooked factors in current practices. It focuses on Germany and Italy because despite political, social and economic similarities, they demonstrate astonishing differences in youth unemployment and organisation of STWT systems. Through the policy analysis and study of individual experiences, TWISTY will offer bottom-up solutions to improve STWT strategies. The findings will not only fill in the gaps in understanding of personal trajectories of skilled youth to stable employment in complicated STWT systems but also inform more nuanced policy recommendations that can be adapted to other contexts with similar socio-economic conditions. The project aligns with the EU policies on integrating young people into the labour market and contributes to the achievement of SDGs.

Renewable energy has become a crucial issue in the current socio-ecological crisis, but in recent years its generation through large wind and solar farms is causing environmental conflicts, as has happened with dams. However, the hegemonic narratives about dams tend to be very positive and there are few analyses of them as conflict and “sacrifice zone” from an environmental history and environmental justice perspectives that consider their impact on local communities along time. There is also a lack of studies on the construction of dams in a country as a whole and comparison between countries to get an international overview. This project aims to fill these historiographic gaps, identifying the elements that turned dams into environmental conflicts, analysing their impact on local communities since their planning or construction onwards, and constructing an overview of dam building in Spain and in Italy since 1900 to the present time, adopting a comparative and international perspective and revealing what hegemonic narratives have hidden and silenced. Both southern European countries are similar in terms of climate and rainfall pattern, internal territorial differences and political history last century, and they are the 1st and the 3rd more damned countries in the EU. The reconstruction of a comparative history of dam building can allow a better understanding of the current resistance phenomena to renewable energy projects and a territorial mediation in these conflicts. The research will be based on information gathered in archives, media, written and audiovisual materials and through interviews and field trips. Carrying out the project DAMSECIS at UniBg, I will enhance my training with new skills, as territorial mediation, and methods, as prosopography, comparative history, mapping and the construction of multidisciplinary digital research infrastructure such as databases with georeferenced historical series, and it will open new career opportunities in Europe.

Gas turbines play several important roles in Europe, contributing to various sectors of the economy. According to the Polaris Market report, the global gas turbine market was valued at 22.25 billion USD in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.3% till 2030. At this huge global market size, since fossil fuels are burned in gas turbines, they release greenhouse gases, including CO2. Based on the 2030 EU Climate Target Plan, sets Europe on a responsible path to becoming climate neutral by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions should be cut by at least 55% by 2030. Hydrogen gas turbines offer several advantages over fossil fuels, making them an attractive option for clean and sustainable energy generation (zero emissions), helping to face climate change, and reducing air pollution. However, hydrogen burns at a higher temperature compared to other fuels, which poses challenges for turbine blade cooling and requires an efficient cooling technique to maintain blade integrity. Film cooling, by injecting cold air at discrete locations over the exposed surfaces through holes and slots, is one of the available technologies. Additive structures, such as ramps, near the exit of the cooling hole geometry can be used to improve the film-cooling effectiveness, thus increasing the gas turbine efficiency. The geometrical configuration of the upstream ramp can significantly affect the cooling effectiveness on the surface and the mixing between coolant and mainstream. Therefore, the ramp configuration should be carefully designed. In this project, this goal will be achieved through a multidisciplinary optimization approach, based on the combination of experiments and high-fidelity Large Eddy Simulations, making use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning approaches. The outcome of the project will be an optimization tool and an optimized ramp to be applied on the cooling hole and expected to result in better thermal efficiency in the gas turbines and lower fuel consumption.