Overview

The aim of the PhD programme in Cultural and Environmental Heritage is a multicultural course which combines interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective. Special attention in training is paid to the tangible and intangible aspects of cultural heritage and their legislation, as well as to the protection, recovery, preservation and transmission of cultural heritage.

The educational objective of the PhD in BCA provides knowledge and skills from the interaction between different disciplines, such as the humanities, science, law and social sciences, conducted within common facilities and laboratories. The essential feature of the PhD training in BCA is the refinement of solid basic skills in the relevant disciplinary field combined with the acquisition of conceptual models and methodologies which deal with complex problems and new challenges in the field of protection, conservation, management and valorization of cultural and environmental heritage.

PhD students in BCA will be able to exploit their high level of specialization as well as of multidisciplinary training that provides skills and methods to be applied in team collaborations. The substantial objective is to train a new generation of scholars aware of the challenges of the coming years related to the central role, respectively, of environmental protection and the transmission of the multiple forms of cultural heritage as values of the national, European and world community.

In addition to the training of new researchers to be included in national and international research - not only with reference to university recruitment or recruitment in public research organisations - the PhD graduates will gain high-level skills to develop new professional skills in the field of integrated management of cultural and environmental heritage.

In particular, as far as heritage is concerned, the gradual transformation of public and private museums into organisations with research tasks will favour a gradual insertion of PhD graduates in these new realities. This is due in part to the numerous agreements already in place, and to a hopefully increasingly close relationship with the Ministry of Culture (MiC) and the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security (MATTM).

In particular, the 'Science and Technologies for Cultural Heritage' (STECH) curriculum is qualified as a course specifically targeted to the qualification of 'conservation scientist', whose professional profile is among those recognised by the MiC. The two curricula provide a training in the national and international business in the Heritage Science, which requires high multidisciplinary skills.

Moreover, PhD graduates acquire skills useful for the profiles of officials regulated by Ministerial Decree 244 of 20 May_2019
In particular, the doctorate in BCA contributes to the training of different specialists as
- Officers, as physical anthropologist, archaeologist, archivist, librarian
- Officer in diagnostics and science and technology applied to cultural heritage, art historian, musicologist (DG-OR n. 1112, 2.7.2024);
- Officer in environmental management and land restoration (ISTAT code 2.2.1.2);
- Officer in technology transfer (ISTAT code 2.5.3.1.2).

Cultural memory: the history and culture of Mediterranean and Eastern civilisations; the forms, objects and modes of transmission of cultural memory; public history - a new frontier of studies in which knowledge is fundamental for cultural mediation and public communication, in line with the 'third mission' of universities; the relationship between tangible and intangible heritage, including the particularly problematic sphere of protecting tangible heritage as well as ethno-cultural heritage in areas at risk.

Environments, objects and rights: a historical and diagnostic analysis of monuments and artefacts of historical interest, including a study of their musealisation also through processes of digitisation and virtualisation, together with the study, protection and enjoyment of bioenvironmental elements as heritage assets; all these issues entail a strong focus on the implications at a legal and regulatory level.

Environment and landscape, cities and architectures: analysis and tools used in environmental protection, in which the core disciplines are ecology, biology, geology, physics, engineering, economics, law, political science and legal aspects, including in-depth studies of biological and anthropological heritage, the relationship between man and the environment, archaeology, town planning, industrial archaeology, the consolidation and rehabilitation of historical buildings, the history of urban and local development, the sustainable development of tourism and the use of cities of art.

Models of governance and the operational management of common assets: through risk assessment and management, resource use efficiency, the definition and quantification of the value of ecosystemic services, the assessment of natural resource consumption and production of liquid, solid and gaseous waste, transformation of the landscape and also the dissemination of technical skills and local knowledge.

Production technologies, characterisation of materials, conservation.

Development of advanced analytical protocols (spectroscopic, immunochemical, DFT calculation and chemometric), micro and non-invasive diagnostic methodologies, methodologies for intervention on moisture phenomena in historic buildings, interaction with atmospheric pollutants, tomographic systems (digital radiography, X-Ray computer 3D tomography, software for real-time tomography and 3D rendering).

Development of innovative materials and methods used in conservation and restoration: design, development, testing and performance of materials (nanomaterials, polymers, biopolymers, composite materials) and innovative methods used in the consolidation, cleaning and protection of movable and immovable works of art

Sensing, monitoring and representation technologies:
- Definition of protocols and standards used in the production of 3D content for cultural heritage monitoring, methods and protocols for the production of 3D models with semantic structure for applications in Cognitive Systems,
- Design of web-based applications for the storage and use of technical and scientific data related to conservation and restoration projects,
- Content production and design of collaborative augmented reality systems and effective workflows,
- Integrated multiscale techniques used in the survey and monitoring of cultural heritage with the integration of topographic, photogrammetric, laser-scanner and spatial positioning techniques, UAV and remote sensing surveys,
- Acquisitions with multispectral sensors and scanners of different types,
- GIS applications for data management, 3D models: development of new procedures for the optimal metric acquisition and processing of point clouds and surfaces,
- ICT methodologies and techniques for the creation, analysis, representation (virtual and augmented/mixed reality) and multi-sensory interaction with digital data.