Seminars & Events
In this section you will find information on Italy-related academic activities, lectures, seminars etc. at the University of Oxford and elsewhere. Each Academic Term ISO liaises with other associations and circulates a detailed programme of all events related to Italy taking place in Oxford.
If you would like to be added to the ISO mailing list in order to receive notification of Italy-related activities and events, please send an e-mail to italianstudies@area.ox.ac.uk.
2024
2023
2022
For previous years scroll down the News sections here.
3. Media and politics in contemporary Italy:
In 2009-12 ISO collaborated with the Oxford based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and its Axess Programme on Journalism and Democracy in their research project entitled The Italian Media in the Age of Silvio Berlusconi. We jointly organized a numbers of seminars, with leading protagonists and experts: from journalists such as Enrico Franceschini and Beppe Severgnini, to social media leaders such as Beppe Grillo (who at the time had the most popular blog in Italy). The programme peaked with a book by the two co-ordinators: Ferdinando Giugliano and John Lloyd, Eserciti di carta: Come si fa informazione in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2013).
In the following years, the topic has remained a constant presence in ISO's seminar and events
Historically, ISO's first seminar cycle was entitled: Italy's Changing Shapes.
Seminars included:
- Italy in the making: Discussing the evolution of Italian economy and society from 1796 to the present (20.05.08);
- Italy and Communism. The Role of Palmiro Togliatti, Leader of the Italian Communism Party (1926-64) (20.10.08);
- Italy and its Racisms (10.04.09);
- What freedom, and whose freedom? Berlusconi and the case of La Repubblica's ten questions (21.10.09);
- Round Table - Living with the Mafia: Peppino Impastato and I cento passi (11.02.10);
- Benedetta Tobagi: Book presentation of Come mi batte forte il tuo cuore (18.06.10);
- The Mezzogiorno and Economic Policy in Italy (20.01.11);
- Bill Emmott - "The Good Italy vs. The Bad Italy: A Post-Berlusconi Agenda for Levelling the Playing Field" (09.02.11);
- John Prideaux - "What's wrong (and right) with Italy?" (15.06.11);
- Furio Colombo - "Does the Left have a Future?" (24.06.11);
- Beppe Severgnini - Berlusconi Explained for Posterity and Friends in England (29.11.11)
- Stefano Scarpetta - Them and Us: How the Jobs Crisis affected Labour Market Outsiders in Italy and Other OECD Countries (01.02.12)
- Writing about the Mafias: John Dickie and Federico Varese in Conversation (16.02.12)
Our second seminar series dealt with migration issues, and was called Destinazione Italia.
Seminars included:
- Ornela Vorpsi in Conversation (25.11.09);
- Everything but Italian: The Representation of Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in the Italian Press (10.03.10);
- Giallo a Milano: Documentary Screening and Discussion with Director Sergio Basso (16.06.10)
- La Quarta Via: Documentary Screening and Discussion with Director Simone Brioni and Protagonist Kaha Mohamed Aden (04.03.11)
- Filmografia italo-libica: Una storia attraverso le immagini del colonialismo e del postcolonialismo italiano in Libia 1911-2008 (21.06.11)
- Old Italians and New Italians: Emigration, Immigration and Italian Identity (25.10.11)
- Letteratura migrante e letteratura di genere. Quali relazioni? (15.11.11)
Co-organised events
ISO also co-organizes events with other Oxford-based societies, such the Oxford Union, the Oxford University Italian Society, and TOIA, as well as - for example - with the Sub-Faculty of Italian, Said Business School, Fonderia Oxford and the Axess Programme on Journalism (with whom we run the Media and Politics in Contemporary Italy seminar series).
In this capacity, we have welcomed speakers such as Professor Romano Prodi, H.E. Ambassador Giancarlo Aragona, Roberto Saviano, Beppe Grillo, Paolo Garimberti, Carlo Debenedetti, Lorella Zanardo and Enrico Franceschini (La repubblica).