Research projects

Titolo: DEMETRA←→ARTEMED: Adapting, Revising, and Tailoring Evidence-based interventions to enhance Mediterranean Diet adherence
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 4
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Valentina Carfora (Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore)
Responsabile Locale: Prof.ssa Margherita Guidetti (UNIMORE)
Contributo MUR: EUR 39.093,00
Inizio-Fine: 30.11.2023-29.11.2025
Abstract: Beyond indisputable benefits for health, the Mediterranean Diet (MeDiet) is one of the most sustainable dietary patterns, and is recognised as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The MeDiet has a lower environmental impact than other dietary patterns thanks to its emphasis on Local Seasonal Plant-based Foods (LSPF). For this, the main goal of the DEMETRA project is to enhance the adherence to the MeDiet. “DEMETRA” stands to remind the cultural value of the MeDiet by referring to the goddess of crops and harvest, as well as the cycle of the seasons. Its heteropalindrome, ARTEMED abbreviates the title of the current project: “Adapting, Revising, and Tailoring Evidence-based interventions to enhance MEditerranean Diet adherence". The main aim will be achieved by the collaboration of four Research Units (Catholic University of Milan = UNICATT, University of Padova = UNIPD, University of Modena-Reggio Emilia = UNIMORE, University of Naples Federico II = UNINA) thanks to a multi-method design (i.e., qualitative studies, controlled experiments to digital interventions) characterised by different methodologies (e.g., questionnaires, implicit measures, focus groups, experimental auctions with a tasting test, smartphone interventions) and an interdisciplinary approach (social psychology and behavioural economics). The main aim will be specifically defined by 2 Milestones (Ms) articulated in 11 Work Packages (WPs) each with specific Activities (As; 19 studies and 11 dissemination tasks). M1 focuses on increasing awareness of the low environmental impact of the LSPF of the MeDiet and promoting their consumption. In year I, UNIMORE and UNIPD will pretest the experimental materials and evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive, emotional, moral and normative appeals promoting LSPF consumption with 10 experimental studies. UNINA will test sensory claims promoting LSPF in 2 studies with a quali-quantitative methodology. At the end of the year I, all Research Units will collaborate on 6 As to disseminate the collected results. M2 focuses on developing a personalised digital intervention to spread the cultural heritage of the MeDiet. In year I, UNICATT will implement 3 As to engage people in using a mobile app promoting LSPF consumption and test the integration of diverse behavioural strategies aimed to support long-lasting changes. In year II, UNICATT will test tailored mobile interventions. The final wave of dissemination will focus on presenting the outcomes of the M2 to the scientific community through 5 As. The overall deliverable of the project will be an evidence-based protocol reporting the most effective communication strategies to enhance LSPF consumption and their application in personalised digital interventions. The implementation of the DEMETRA project can have a decisive economic, environmental, scientific and social impact.

Titolo: The Digital Transition and the World of Work: Labour markets, Organizations, Job quality and Industrial Relations
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 4
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Valeria Cirillo (UNIBA)
Responsabile Locale: Prof. Matteo Rinaldini (UNIMORE)
Contributo MUR: EUR 49.489,00
Inizio-Fine: 15.10.2023-14.10.2025
Abstract: DIGITWORK represents an ambitious research endeavour promising far-reaching advances in our understanding of the effects of the digital transition on the world of work, intended as (i) labour markets, (ii) employment structures, (iii) organizations, (iv) job quality and (v) industrial relations. The ultimate goal is to shed lights on the mechanisms and factors through which digital and automation technologies can fuel socio-economic divergences by asymmetrically affecting firms, occupations and workers. The project - having both a scientific and societal ambition - integrates quantitative and qualitative in-depth analyses involving expertise from economics and economic sociology, labour studies and industrial relations. The quantitative approach, resting on the evolutionary theory of technical change, industry and firm evolution, will first take into account the variety of technological artifacts in place, distinguishing among different end use and related unfolding of the digital transition for the world of work. Second, it will identify distinct trajectories of firm-level adoption according to be labour-expelling/augmenting and labor-downgrading/upgrading, considering both the eventual change in the overall amount of the workforce employed but also transformations in the internal occupational structure. Third, focusing on truly labor-saving technologies, DIGITWORK will provide a direct measure of tasks and occupational level exposure to the digital transition assessing the sectoral/geographical distribution of the most exposed workers. The qualitative analysis will first illuminate the still widely under-researched and under-theorised role of labour/capital power relations in shaping processes of technological change and their impact on job quality. Second, by focusing on sectors characterized by different prevalent processes of technological innovation, it will explore the differentiated ways in which heterogeneous technologies can influence job quality and patterns of industrial relations. The multidisciplinary approach unambiguously shows several advantages. It allows, first, from a theoretical perspective, to go beyond deterministic and over-simplified analyses on the effects of technical change over the world of work by adopting a socio-technical lens; second, from a methodological perspective, to confront findings and results deriving from different levels of observation, therefore enabling a continuous informative process of multi-level analysis, from macro to micro and back and forth; third, from a policy perspective, to formulate fine-grained implications resting on both wide range information, deriving from large scale dataset, and granular information derived from case studies. Finally, from a societal viewpoint, the attention to the type of technology in use and the distinct effects on the world of work allow the consortium to develop an integrated knowledge to inform and shape the social dialogue across parties.

Titolo: Promoting Healthy And Sustainable Eating (PHASE). A deep investigation to reduce and replace meat consumption
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 3
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Michela Lenzi (UNIPD)
Responsabile Locale: Prof.ssa Margherita Guidetti (UNIMORE)
Contributo MUR: EUR 57.000,00
Inizio-Fine: 15.10.2023-14.10.2025
Abstract: The overarching goal of the present project is Promoting Healthy And Sustainable Eating (i.e., PHASE from now on) focusing on the most effective diet change, namely meat reduction and replacement (MRR). The current demand for meat consumption is a global threat to both people and the planet. The production of meat is mostly responsible for a huge environmental impact in terms of both consumption and pollution of natural resources (e.g., Clark et al., 2020). In addition, the global problem of undernourishment and food insecurity could be solved by replacing most meat with plant-based food (Berners-Lee et al., 2018). Finally, as excessive meat consumption increases the risk of mortality and numerous chronic diseases, MRR is a win-win and urgent action (Willett et al., 2019). This general goal will be achieved from a psycho-social perspective, allowing a deep understanding of personal, socio-cultural and external factors related to MRR, and thus suggesting the most effective strategies to encourage this behaviour. First, we intend to detect a clear and complete picture of meat consumption and its antecedents in the Italian context (AIM 1). Second, we aim to understand how to promote MRR focusing on less studied factors (AIM 2) and using methodologies which overcome some limits of previous studies (AIM 3). In addition, the first scientific attempt to build an ecological and tailored intervention promoting MRR will be carried out (AIM 4). Finally, a constant effort will be devoted to disseminating the main findings not only to the scientific community but also to stakeholders and the general population (AIM 5). The project will be carried on through a constant collaboration of three Research Units (RUs): University of Padua (UNIPD), University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE), Catholic University of Milan (UNICATT) and 4 Work Packages (WPs). The proposed research will benefit from a multi-method approach, wide and heterogeneous samples and a funnel structure proceeding by linked and increasingly specific goals. Starting from a bird’s eye view, WP1 will provide a snapshot of meat consumption in Italy by identifying its main contextual and individual antecedents. Then, going down more closely, WP2 will experimentally test the effectiveness of several communication strategies promoting MRR, by focusing on personal and socio-cultural factors. Finally, WP3 will combine the results of the previous WPs for the construction of a personalised mobile intervention aimed to promote MRR. Overall, results from these 3 WPs have the potential to significantly increase the scientific knowledge about the most effective communication strategies to sensitise people on the urgency of adopting this behavioural change. Concluding, with the WP4 we aim at disseminating our main findings through the organisation of an international workshop. The current project will finally provide important insights able to inform social communication experts and policy-makers.

Titolo: Parameter theory on historical corpora: Measuring the power of parameter setting theory on historical corpora – PARTHICO
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 4
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Emanuela Sanfelici (UNIPD)
Responsabile Locale: Prof.ssa Cristina Guardiano (UNIMORE)
Contributo MUR: EUR 49.577,00
Inizio-Fine: 05.10.2023-04.10.2025
Abstract: A central question in linguistics is to explain the tension between the universal nature of the human language faculty and the observed diversity of its empirical instantiations. Various proposals try to solve this tension relying on the notion of parameters, i.e. binary options allowing for cross-linguistic structural variation (Chomsky 1981, 2005; Roberts 2007; Biberauer 2019). The implementation of parameter theories incurs into two major problems: they usually resort to ungrammaticality judgments, a kind of evidence language acquirers do not have access to, and they leave unexplored the procedure behind parameter setting. This project embraces these challenges by measuring the power of parametric models through an innovative method, i.e. the application of parameter theories to historical corpora, which qualify as an ideal testing ground, since they contain continuous texts which can be taken as a proxy for the primary linguistic data used by language acquirers. We test the list of nominal parameters and their setting procedure proposed in Crisma/Guardiano/Longobardi (2020) on the Old Italian corpus which will be finalized during the project. The procedure will be replicated on the syntactically annotated corpora of Early New High German, Historical Icelandic and Old and Middle English, which conform to the UPenn-style conventions and allow for automated searches of syntactic constituents, constructions and processes. This project will offer an innovative contribution to the logical problem of language acquisition, the architecture of parameter systems and nominal syntax. Once validated on positive evidence and historical corpora, our parameter setting procedure will be able to bridge the gap between descriptive and explanatory adequacy. Also, by comparing Old Italian and historical Germanic with modern varieties, we will provide a principled characterization of the attested nominal structures in relation with their possible diachronic developments. In addition, we will highlight how the correlation and competition between structures can be traced back to the intricate network of dependencies among parameters. Furthermore, we will enlarge the list of nominal parameters by including a full characterization of the syntax of relative clauses. Last but not least, we will release a syntactically annotated corpus of Old Italian, free of charge and fully compatible with the UPenn-style treebank corpora of other historical languages.

Titolo: Customer delight: toward a new conceptualisation of the construct in technological environments powered by Artificial Intelligence
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 3
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Silvia Grappi (UNIMORE)
Responsabile Locale: Prof.ssa Silvia Grappi (UNIMORE)
Contributo MUR: EUR 75.102,00
Inizio-Fine: 28.09.2023-27.09.2025
Abstract: More than 20 years ago, Oliver et al. (1997) introduced the concept of customer delight to the academic literature, defining it as the state wherein a customer’s expectations are exceeded to a considerably surprising degree. This construct has been studied across diverse contexts (e.g. entertainment and leisure, retail, service), showing positive impacts on relevant organisational outcomes (e.g. positive word-of-mouth, repurchase intention, loyalty). The importance of employee-related aspects such as attitude and skills have also clearly emerged as key drivers within this research stream (Barnes & Krallman, 2019). Yet as the economy increasingly shifts toward solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI; Huang & Rust, 2018, 2020; Huang et al., 2019), often replacing human interactions with virtual assistants (VAs) or chatbots, there is a growing need to understand how firms can create delight in experiences that are not employee centred (Hoyer et al., 2020). What factors delight customers when they interact with AI-powered solutions in new technological environments? In this project, we will develop a more comprehensive conceptualisation of customer delight and investigate what creates customer delight in interactions with AI-powered solutions during customer experiences. To pursue these objectives, this project will use a mixed-methods approach to conceptualise customer delight in new technological environments and its relevant antecedents.

Solicited data gathered using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) and qualitative surveys, as well as unsolicited customer-generated online data, will be used in the exploratory phase of the project. Next, surveys, experiments and field studies will be conducted to (a) develop scale items to reliably measure the components of customer delight, (b) show that customer delight affects relevant outcomes using behavioural data and (c) identify the relevant antecedents of customer delight, highlighting how different types of customer interactions with AI-powered solutions during consumption experiences affect the construct. Finally, we will propose an expanded conceptualisation of customer delight in new technological environments. We expect that this project will make several major contributions: extending the conceptualisation of customer delight to new technological environments by developing a new metric for the construct; adding to the existing literature by introducing new technology-based paths to customer delight; proving the effectiveness of a multi-method interdisciplinary approach by attaining insights into consumers’ behavioural patterns; and participating in the urgent debate over the relationship between humans and AI by adopting a consumer-centric perspective.

Titolo: Towards Circular Economy: A Business Model Innovation Perspective
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 5
Principal Investigator: Prof. Paolo Di Toma (UNIMORE)
Responsabile Locale: Prof. Paolo Di Toma (UNIMORE)
Contributo MUR: EUR 43.357,00
Inizio-Fine: 28.09.2023-27.09.2025
Abstract: The circular economy is a paradigmatic change for the economic activity and for people's lifestyles. It responds to a clearly recognized need by civil society to substantially change current practices to ensure continuity and development for the environment and future generations. This research enters the field of the transition to the circular economy and aims to advance our theoretical understanding of the firms’ business model innovation oriented to the circular economy and its drivers, with a particular focus to digitization and managerial practices. The research also has significant implications for firms and policymakers, as it will help highlight which drivers affect the capacity of business models innovation, combining the needs of competitiveness and performance with the growing expectations of sustainability and environmental protection expressed by the civil society. In this view, during 2020 Pandemic environmental problems and climate change became pressure trend that firms must consider as one of the most important objectives to pursue. ESG performance became very important by investors, because data showed that the flow of funds privileged lower environmental and governance risks. So, among the debate about the armonization of ESG standards, there is an open space about how to is developing the passage from traditional Business Model to a new sustainable paradigm more suitable of Circular Economy (Korhonen et al. 2018 and Kirchherr et al., 2017). Inside of that passage, eco-efficiency using environmental variable (Baldarelli, 2017) is considered one of the most important matters to investigate facing future challenges. The research will be conducted by adopting a mixed method which includes a quantitative and then a qualitative study. After having developed the theoretical framework, a rich and articulated database will be built that will allow to connect the economic, financial and environmental performance of firms subject to environmental regulation. The project focuses on Italian companies with the greatest environmental impact. A survey will be employed to investigate relationships between economic and environmental performance, and other parameters related to business model innovation. Subsequent qualitative research, conducted through a multiple case study, will allow to investigate how and why some previously identified drivers affect the innovation capacity of business models oriented towards the circular economy. The results of the quantitative and qualitative research will support the development of a model that will advance our theoretical understanding of the topic and can contribute to the challenges of businesses and civil society in the transition to the circular economy.

Titolo: Digital and green transitions in Italian businesses: An assessment of the main antecedents
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 3
Principal Investigator: Dott.ssa Claudia Ghisetti (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca)
Responsabile Locale: Dott. Domenico Rocco Cambrea
Contributo MUR: EUR 69.200,00
Inizio-Fine: 28.09.2023-27.09.2025
Abstract: Digital and green transformations have been placed at the core of the current European policy agenda with an explicit reference to the goal of achieving a “twin transition”, funded by the € €806.9bn NextGenerationEU. Firms, on their side, are asked to redesign their businesses along the digital and green trajectories and to create new products, services and business models that are both sustainable and inclusive but also digital. The first research objective of this project is to analyze the level of digital maturity and environmental sustainability in Italian firms. The shift towards a sustainable and more inclusive economic model may be enabled by the pervasive diffusion of digital technologies by key actors, notwithstanding the peculiarity of the specific country context within which firms operate. Indeed, the Italian industrial system is primarily composed by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that represent around 99% of all firms and employ more than 75% of people . ISTAT data (2021) show that the 90% of the country’s companies have less than 10 employees. Being resource constraints one of the most relevant barriers that characterizes innovation projects, it follows that the paucity of internal resources, competences and capabilities available to SMEs may hamper their capacity to deal with the grand twin challenge. Given these well-known constraints, the second research objective of this project is to investigate whether digitalization and sustainability are undertaken as competing or complementary strategic options. Furthermore, the Italian industrial system is characterized by the presence of family businesses . Most of the Italian SMEs are companies owned and managed by families. Family firms present peculiar characteristics that could act as resistance/diffusion mechanisms towards the digital and green transitions. Therefore, the third research objective of this project is to analyse the peculiar financial, governance and managerial nature of Italian family SMEs as positive or negative antecedents of the adoption of digital technologies and sustainable measures, practices and business models. By leveraging on the proprietary dataset collected by Dintec in the time-period 2018-2021 and augmenting this existing primary dataset with governance, management and financial secondary data from external databases, we aim to contribute to the business economics and management broad literature, but most importantly to provide policy makers a clear picture on the current status quo of Italian companies and their achievements in terms of twin. Moreover, policy makers will be informed on potential barriers towards such transitions and how to help Italian firms to overcome them and be prepared for the associated challenges and opportunities. Furthermore, this research will give birth to a persistent, living observatory data that could give updated information on the ongoing transition and its future developments.

Titolo: Models of language variation and change: new evidence from language contact
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 4
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Maria Rita Manzini (Università degli Studi di Firenze)
Responsabile Locale: Prof.ssa Cristina Guardiano
Contributo MUR: EUR 91.048,00
Inizio-Fine: 30.12.2019-30.12.2023
Abstract: Linguistic variation and change are interesting to the extent that, no less than language universals, they appear to be not accidental to language, but rather written into its basic design. Specifically, conceptual and inferential components are presumably not subject to variation/change – nor are the computational components (syntactic operations, phonological operations). Rather, variation arises when these components interact (notably at externalization), posing questions of functional optimization to the system. “Why are there so many languages? The reason might be that the problem of externalization can be solved in many different and independent ways”. “Diversity of language results from the fact that the principles do not determine the answers to all questions about language, but leave some questions as open parameters” (Berwick & Chomsky 2015). Within the framework just defined, our general research objective in meshing contact data with parametric models is to detect, describe, measure and explain language diversity, using the external impulses acting on it as a tool to get to the core of the internal structures that determine it (i.e. the speakers’ grammatical competence). Our aim is threefold: (i) collecting and describing syntactic data in several domains of language microvariation and contact in which the research team has documented expertise; (ii) carrying out a formal syntactic analysis of the data, with emphasis on contact as a magnifying lens on (micro)variation and change; (iii) developing and comparing models of syntactic parameters in the light of the formally analyzed data. We are interested in contact phenomena not in themselves but in so far as they are one of the external factors that may act as catalyzers or accelerators for variation and change. By contact, we mean any situation in which two different languages are spoken by the same community, hence in condition of bilingualism. Specifically, we are interested in situations of protracted (centuries-long) contact, often historically documented, which allow us to observe internal diversification of the languages involved both on the temporal axis (change) and on the spatial axis (dialectal variation). The empirical foundation of the project rests on several domains of evidence, which are robustly represented in the publications of the research team. Each of these domains is noted by the rich internal microvariation. They will form the object of further data gathering by fieldwork or by quantitative corpus analysis. We mention a representative sample: • German(ic) varieties in contact with Romance: Cimbrian, Mòcheno, Saurano, Sappadino, Timavese; see also the participation of members of the Verona unit to AthEME - Advancing the European Multilingual Experience (PI, L. Cheng, Leiden, EU 7th FP); • Greek and Albanian varieties in contact with Romance, specifically Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) and Italiot Greek (Southern Calabria: Bovesia; Salento: Grecìa Salentina) • West Germanic/North Germanic/Romance (possibly Celtic) contact in the passage from Old to Middle English. The formal analysis aims at investigating domains of syntax and of the syntax/externalization interface on which the team has extensive publication record, specifically case/agreement and word order phenomena, both in the noun phrase and in the sentence. This is a paramount requirement for the third and crucial stage of our research centering on parametric models – to be evaluated not with respect to the raw data, but with respect to their formal analyses. Once again, we will take our bearings from previous work of the units. We will collaborate with the ERC AdG project LanGeLin - Meeting Darwin's last challenge (PI, G. Longobardi, York) of which Guardiano is Permanent Project Advisor. The implementation on the microvariation level of their Parametric Comparison Method (PCM), namely a structured system of a few dozen parameters for the nominal domain, has shown that several refinements are required (Guardiano et al. 2016). The approach to microvariation connected to the Lexical Parametrization Hypothesis (Manzini & Wexler 1987, Chomsky 1995, Manzini & Savoia 2011), ties variation to the externalization space defined by the lexicon in order to yield the required detail. Our first goal is a comparison and unification of these approaches. The ultimate goal we work towards is a more ambitious global reassessment of current parametric models. In proposing to carry out this research, we are highly aware that the empirical domains we investigate are fragile or outright endangered. Though language policy is not our focus, the project includes a social impact component, integrating a language education package – in recognition of the crucial role it plays in strengthening the use of a minority language in contact with a standard language.

Titolo: Social Education on the MoveSettore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 11
Principal Investigator: Prof. Dorota Bazuń (UNIWERSYTET ZIELONOGORSKI - Polonia)
Responsabile Locale: Prof. Federico Montanari
Contributo MUR: EUR 43.814,00
Inizio-Fine: 01.09.2020-31.08.2023
Abstract: MODEL OF MOBILE SOCIAL EDUCATION (MmsED) is a response to identified trends, problems and needs related to contemporary social life and academic education. Analysis of the literature on the subject showed a significant gap between the latest achievements of social sciences and academic practice. In didactics, such trends as "relational turn" (Donati 2017), "mobility turn" (Urry 2009), "m-learning" (Klimova, Poulova 2016), "walking methodologies" (O'Neill 2020) are not properly reflected in teaching. Our intention is to reduce this gap. We write about this in more detail, justifying the need to develop studies on the mobile model of social education. The ways of working with students at individual universities participating in this project are very diverse. However, many institutions still dominate the traditional, passive way of information transfer, in which the teacher is the sender and the student is the recipient. In light of the data and opinions obtained, traditional academic education is assessed by students (data from the evaluation of classes) as:

(1) OUT OF DATE IN SUBMISSION OF CONTENT;
(2) INADEQUATE TO THE CHANGING NEEDS OF STUDENTS AND THE LABOR MARKET;
(3) NON-ATTRACTIVE FOR TRANSMISSION.

Below we develop these issues.

(1) MmsED is an attempt to answer THE CONTINUITY OF CONTENT in a traditional model of education that is associated with rapidly changing social life, which program changes cannot keep up with. The use of this model will involve, among other things, that joint field activities will allow focusing attention on new phenomena and problems directly noticed (e.g. changes in space-related to global warming, spatial manifestations of divisions and social inequalities, social behaviour and relations in public spaces) ). The emphasis is on experiencing (seeing, listening, talking, feeling) and then on the knowledge that can be generated, depending on the needs, either before or after mobile classes so that you can already relate to these experiences.
(2) The described model is also an attempt to answer the GROWING NEEDS OF STUDENTS who want to acquire new skills and competencies, including communication and organizational ones. The traditional model encloses students within the university walls, limits their activity and subjectivity. The mobile model provides definitely greater activity and independence of class participants who will act as organizers, experts, guides, players, partners for external stakeholders. Reflexivity, criticality and independence are also needed from the point of view of the LABOR MARKET.
(3) The mobile model increases ATTRACTIVENESS OF LEARNING FORMS, not only because of the active role of students but also due to the participation of external stakeholders (experts, employers, activists, people at risk of marginalization) in joint activities).

PROJECT GOALS: The aim of the project is to develop, implement and disseminate innovation in the form of MmsED in higher education. Its attribute is organizing the teaching process in motion, outside the university walls, also with the participation of stakeholders from outside the academic environment (citizens, representatives of institutions and organizations, activists, people at risk of marginalization, guides to specific contexts and social spaces). This model combines three important features of the educational process: (1) MOBILITY; (2) PARTICIPATION; (3) INCLUSION. The listed features relate to both the content and form of the designed teaching tools and classes. Based on the pilot classes, we assume that the organization of teaching classes in motion, with the active participation of students and other people, promotes better preparation for social life, including the role of an active citizen. We also assume that thanks to the introduction of the MOBILE SOCIAL EDUCATION MODEL, the didactic offer at the universities participating in the project will be more (1) CURRENT compared to the traditional model; (2) ADDITIONAL FOR NEEDS; (3) ATTRACTIVE for class participants.

MODEL OF MOBILE SOCIAL EDUCATION(MmsED) consists of three modules:
(1) EXPLORATORY (RESEARCH) WALKS;
(2) STUDY VISITS;
(3) EDUCATIONAL GAMES ON THE MOVE.

Titolo: Construire ensemble de la connaissance pour mieux appréhender l’entreprise dans son ecosysteme afin de favoriser l’acces des jeunes a l’emploi
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Numero Unità: 9
Principal Investigator: Prof. Alex Joder (FREREF – France)
Responsabile Locale: Prof. Massimo Neri
Contributo MUR: EUR 44.026,00
Inizio-Fine: 01.09.2016-31.08.2019
Abstract: The will to build bridges between the world of education and training and the economic world remains a high priority for Europe with the 4th objective of the strategic framework for European cooperation in the field of education and training (ET 2020): "encourage creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training"; many actions are implemented in this direction. However, it is clear that teachers are not very well equipped regarding a their knowledge of financial, economic, organizational and social issues that structure the company and its role in the development of the economy. The objective of the Cokleeco project is to promote a better mutual knowledge between the two spheres; to update their mutual representations and to foster and sustain their cooperation through designing and building new training courses matching the realities of the different organizations in the partner regions. In a first step, these training courses have a regional dimension; in a second step, the partners work together to build a European integreted training course. Bringing together stakeholders from both the world of education and that of the company, the Cokleeco project brings together 9 partners from 5 countries: - FREREF (France) – Networks of Regions promoting LLL in Europe, in charge of coordination and evaluation for the project. - MCDN (Poland) – training center for teacher in Krakow -Ense (Spain) – Department of education of the Catalonia Regional authority -Medef Rhône-Alpes (France) – Regional organisation of the most important Employers’ association in France -Rectorat de Grenoble (France) – Public organization depending on the Minister of Education in France. -CCGPE-DGEO (Belgium) – Department of European projects in the Minister of Education in the French speaking part of Belgium. - Confindustria ER (Italy) – Employers’ association in Emilia-Romagna -Unimore (Italy) – University of Modena -FPE (Belgium) – Fondation pour l’Enseignement is cofounded by education bodies and Companies in the French speaking part of Belgium. It works on innovative projects in order to enhance the link between school and companies. The project intends to use innovative practices already exissting in the territories to build the training courses using a decontextualization-recontextualisation approach. The first stage of the Cokleeco project consists of identifying innovative practices in the field, and integrating them within the modules of the training courses. This also enables to determine some "invariants" (common points) for these practices. The second step is the construction of "local" training course on a modular basis. After a test and an evaluation of these regional courses, the partners jointly develop a European training course that will be common to all. The European integrated training course is design and trialled during two learning mobilities of one week each at an interval of six months, The participants also design pilot actions which implement the practical content of the training course in the field, with the students. The final stage of the project is to consolidate the results achieved in a “lessons learned” document and “recommendations” for policy makers, education stakeholders and company staff. These documents are particularly used in the final conference to be held in Belgium in 2019. The Cokleeco project targets three categories of target audiences: -the world of education with teachers but also guidance counselors and Heads of School; -the economic world with business leaders, entrepreneurs, human resources managers but also in-company tutors; - Students through pilot actions to facilitate their understanding of the European socioeconomic environment. By training teachers and enabling sustainable relations with companies, the Cokleeco project acts on mutual representation of stakeholders in the world of education and of the economic world by making them working together in building a common tool; it prepares students for a better understanding of the professional world which should strengthen their employability across the European territory.

Titolo: EdTech and the birth of platform education: An ethnographic account of a start-up in the age of global education
Acronimo: MORPHOGENESIS
Type of action: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – individual Fellowships
Settore: SOC - Social Sciences and Humanities (SOC)
Principal Investigator: Prof. Giancarlo Corsi (UNIMORE)
Progetto presentato da: Pieter Vanden Broeck (University of Louvain - Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche Travail, Etat, Société, CIRTES)
Contributo Ateneo: EUR 269.002,56
Inizio-Fine: 01.03.2021-30.09.2024
Abstract: In its latest action plan on digital education, the European Union underlined the ambition of ensuring that all citizens are prepared to live and work in the digital age. However, the current COVID-19 pandemic, with its widespread closure of schools and universities, has thrown into sharp relief how the introduction of digital technology fundamentally reshapes the organisation of education. Within a few months, it became evident that schooling without school or studying without campus prompts the influx of new, private actors on an unprecedented scale. This project focuses on such digital reorganisation of education, cut off from the classroom. In particular, I propose to investigate how the conversion towards digital learning platforms participates in a worldwide disruption of pedagogical valuation processes. While existing research has so far favoured questions of power and inequalities, the disruptive capacity of these learning platforms to radically redefine what education values as worth learning has hardly been studied. To fill this gap, MORPHOGENESIS proposes (1) to build a framework that formulates an ensemble of concepts with theoretical insights from three related (sub)disciplines (sociology of education, organisation studies and the study of regionalisation and globalisation processes). With the help of Luhmannian systems theory, the coherent formulation of such framework will make it possible to analyse how, through such digital platforms, the reorganisation and the differentiation of global education go hand in hand; (2) to develop an extended case ethnography of the start-up scene in New York, where this so-called EdTech is currently being imagined, coded and executed into the platforms that explicitly aspire to disrupt contemporary education. Together, the conceptual framework and methodology will enable a better grasp of the metamorphosis that education is currently undergoing and the unprecedented role that online learning platforms play within it.

Titolo: Mapping Perceptions of Reggio Emilia and Enhancing Communities through Digital Narratives
Tipo: FAR 2023
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Principal Investigator: Dott. Ruggero Ragonese (UNIMORE)
Contributo Ateneo: EUR 60.000,00
Inizio-fine: 02.11.2023-01.05.2025
Abstract: Recently, the European Union and the United Nations have been promoting initiatives aimed to improve our living spaces and communities through practices and experiences that are enriching, sustainable, and inclusive. 
The need for creating safer, more affordable and resilient communities is one of today’s challenges in the agenda, with the effort to protect and safeguard natural and cultural heritage both at a global and a local scale.
Meeting this challenge calls for understanding how individuals and groups actively contribute to shaping a vision of communities, territory, and cultural and natural heritage. The advent of the 2.0 Web has had a huge impact on “patterns of territorialization, practices of urban experiences as well as uses of cultural heritage, which are growingly mediated by ICTs”. Previously regarded only as passive recipients of public goods and services, citizens are actively involved in producing digital narratives that are able to affect “the imageries which territories are built on” (Albanese & Graziano 2021). The focus of this research, therefore, is not simply on ‘storytelling’, but on ‘digital narratives’, a broader term, that better encompasses the plurality of forms and modalities that online social communication practices use to compose messages. 
We propose to collect and analyze user-generated digital narratives around the city of Reggio Emilia and its surrounding areas, identifying and describing significant concerns and issues around users’ opinions and perceptions of the territory. 
The first step will be the construction of an extensive bilingual corpus (Italian/English) of user-generated digital narratives about the territory. A preliminary qualitative analysis shall enable us to evaluate the online exchange of perceptions and opinions among users. Data analysis will integrate different methods and frameworks of analysis: (i) computational modeling of opinions, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions about the territory through opinion mining and sentiment analysis; (ii) semiotic interpretation of digital narratives, aimed at understanding the interplay between territory, perceptions and social media, as well as its purports on the construction of identities and values both within the national context and across different languages and cultures; (iii) investigation into digital narratives as multitype texts (Adam 2005; Smith 2003), with special attention to the expression of subjective point of view and evaluation (Martin & White 2005), in content about sustainability and related challenges. 
By mapping the territory and its tangible and intangible cultural assets through data from the Internet, the outcome of the study will represent a practical tool for policy-makers and other stakeholders to quickly gauge public sentiment around issues relating to such crucial dimensions as sustainability, inclusiveness and sense of belonging.

Titolo: Understanding and promoting breastfeeding: a two-step intervention to foster expectant mothers’ breastfeeding intentions and behaviour
Tipo: FAR 2022 MISSION ORIENTED
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Margherita Guidetti (UNIMORE)
Contributo Ateneo: EUR 47.500,00
Inizio-fine: 02.11.2022-17.06.2025
Abstract: The general goal of the project is to understand and promote breastfeeding by conducting a longitudinal experimental study involving a convenient sample of pregnant women who will be followed until the fifth month of their child’s life with one assessment and two interventions before birth and three assessments after birth. The specific objectives of the study were elicited by the articulation of different literatures and theoretical frameworks: the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and its extensions, the research on female objectification, the dual process models of behaviour, the literature on preventive health text message and implementation intentions interventions. Several unanswered questions have emerged from this analysis. First, we know that breastfeeding intentions explain approximately one-third of variance in actual behaviour, but no previous studies have tested whether a TPB based communication increases breastfeeding intentions and thus behaviour. 
Second, we know that the predictive power of implicit attitudes increases in morally connoted domains and when behaviour is difficult to control or individuals are in an affective focus, but we do not know whether breast/bottle feeding implicit attitudes can explain additional variance in breastfeeding behaviour, over and above TPB components. Third, we know that women’s self-objectification can negatively affect their breastfeeding attitudes and intentions, but its impact on actual behaviour has never been assessed. Fourth, we know that forming implementation intentions significantly reduces the intention-behaviour gap for many health behaviours, but their effect on breastfeeding has not yet been tested. 
We propose to measure expectant mothers’ cognitive, affective, social and motivational factors related to both breastfeeding and bottle feeding (framed in the TPB), as well as their implicit attitudes and their level of self-objectification. This will allow a further understanding of breast/bottle feeding choices by identifying their most relevant social psychological predictors. In addition, a two-step intervention using a 2 x 3 full factorial between participants design will test (1) whether a simple TPB based communication (vs control) is effective in promoting women’s breastfeeding intentions, and (2) whether an implementation intentions intervention (vs a “tips only” intervention vs control) help translate breastfeeding intentions into actual behaviour. 
The expected results have theoretical and practical implications, since understanding and promoting breastfeeding contribute to the health, environmental, social and economic development of the entire society. Finally, the dissemination of the research findings will have an important impact on the human capital and the territory in terms of increasing knowledge of interdisciplinary group members, health students and professionals, voluntary associations of breastfeeding peer counsellors and the larger community.

Titolo: Customer Delight (CD) in new technological environments powered by artificial intelligence
Tipo: FAR 2021 MISSION ORIENTED
Settore: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities
Principal Investigator: Prof.ssa Silvia Grappi (UNIMORE)
Contributo Ateneo: EUR 46.000,00
Inizio-fine: 30.11.2021-30.11.2023
Abstract: The economy increasingly shifts toward solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI; Huang & Rust, 2018, 2020; Huang et al., 2019), often replacing human interactions with virtual assistants (VAs) or chatbots. AI is deeply and rapidly changing individual everyday-life. It has a great impact on how consumers eat, sleep, work, play and buy, from Fitbit’s fitness tracker to Amazon’s Alexa VA to Spotify’s music playlists. Then, there is a growing need to understand how consumers react to these fast-moving innovations and how firms can create delight in experiences that are not employee centred (Hoyer et al., 2020). Customer delight (CD; Oliver, 1997) is defined as the state wherein a customer’s expectations are exceeded to a considerably surprising degree. This construct has been studied across diverse contexts (e.g. entertainment and leisure, retail, service), showing positive impacts on relevant organisational outcomes. The research project will analyse CD in order to investigate the AI-powered solution phenomenon adopting a consumer-centric perspective. By doing so, particular attention will be addressed to the balance between opportunities and risks linked to AI system. We refer to legal issues linked to collection, management, use and storage of personal data (Big Data). For this reason, a multidisciplinary approach will be used, including marketing legal and economics competences.
The crucial question is: what factors delight customers when they interact with AI-powered solutions in new technological environments? In this project, we will develop a more comprehensive conceptualisation of CD and investigate what creates CD in interactions with AI-powered solutions during customer experiences. To pursue these objectives, this project will use a mixed-methods approach to conceptualise CD in new technological environments and its relevant antecedents. 
Solicited data gathered using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), consumption diaries and qualitative surveys will be used in the exploratory phase of the project. Next, surveys, experiments and field studies will be conducted to (a) develop scale items to reliably measure the components of CD, (b) show that CD affects relevant outcomes and (c) identify the relevant antecedents of CD, highlighting how different types of customer interactions with AI-powered solutions during consumption experiences affect the construct. Finally, we will propose an expanded conceptualisation of CD in new technological environments.
We expect that this project will make several major contributions: extending the conceptualisation of CD to new technological environments by developing a new metric for the construct; adding to the existing literature by introducing new technology-based paths to CD; proving the effectiveness of a multi-method approach; and participating in the urgent debate over the relationship between humans and AI by adopting a consumer-centric perspective.