Doctorate in Social Sciences and Humanities

The Doctorate in Social Sciences and Humanities takes shape from the experience developed in the DISPOC community of researchers during the 2018-2022 Excellence Project, and aims to promote an interdisciplinary training program that encourages exchange between complementary research areas. The ultimate aim of this program is to contribute to the advanced study of the interactions between collective phenomena (political and social) and individual cognitive characteristics.
The doctorate offers an interdisciplinary training plan, structured within the ERC Macro Area in Social Science and Humanities (SSH), and is made up of two curricula : the “Mind and Cultures” curriculum, which includes disciplines included in the ERC SH4 sectors (“ The Human Mind and its Complexity") and SH5 ("Cultures and Cultural Productions"), and the curriculum "Society and Politics", which focuses on the sectors SH2 ("Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems") and SH3 ("The Social World and its Diversity”).
The PhD students of the course in Social Sciences and Humanities will have to develop knowledge in different sectors of advanced research in the field of social and cognitive studies such as: formal and experimental linguistics - in its different areas of syntax, the study of meaning, the study of the different forms of oral externalization or through the marked modality; analytical and cognitive philosophy, in its articulations of philosophy of language, mind and science; behavioral and cognitive economics; cultural and social anthropology - in its most updated forms of anthropology of otherness, gender, post-colonial and heritage performances; political science - in its various forms of study of political institutions, voting behavior, political economy and international relations; general sociology; cultural and communication sociology; communication through different media; computational thinking and its tools; computational applications in natural language and in various fields of communication; statistical processing; social and cognitive psychology; design-thinking methods applied to the study of society and its transformations and to the innovation of products and services; economic geography and the study of interactions between individuals and urban spaces; historical research.
As a whole, the doctoral training plan is designed to include both classroom training, through the provision of dedicated courses, and research activity on topics consistent with the research project of doctoral students. The balance between the two lines of training - frontal teaching and research - is modulated by imagining a growing autonomy of doctoral students: classroom training, prevalent in the first year, will then progressively leave room for research activities and the writing of the thesis.
The dedicated courses of the doctorate are delivered in English. To crown the open and international approach of the initiative, it is expected that the writing of the doctoral thesis will normally be in English, in order to allow better integration of doctoral students in the international research community and guarantee a better dissemination of the results of the research carried out within the doctorate.