AIM - Inter-University Centre for Interaction Analysis and Mediation.

Participants belonging to the Department: Laura Gavioli (coordinator), Sara Amadasi, Claudio Baraldi, Vittorio Iervese, Piera Margutti, Elisa Rossi.

The Centre was formally established in 2010 as a result of the collaboration between scholars from eight universities (Bologna, Genoa, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Naples-L'Orientale, Perugia-Stranieri, Roma3, Siena, Trieste) who signed an agreement to carry out research activities together. This group of founders has recently been joined by the University of Macerata. The AIM Centre's interest lies in studies on communication through interaction, especially in institutional settings and intercultural contexts. More specifically, these are those interactions that contain forms of mediation (e.g. by language mediators, or teachers, or debate coordinators, peace mediators and other institutional workers) in fields such as education, health, law, welfare services and business. The AIM group employs an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together linguists, psychologists and sociologists. It promotes research activities, scientific discussion, dissemination and training, activities that are proposed in a broad framework of national and international contacts and in a perspective of collaboration with local institutions, such as public and private bodies, NGOs, companies.

CIRM Unimore - The Interuniversity Centre for Research on Metaphors (CIRM) is a research centre founded in 2018 from the collaboration between four Italian universities: Genoa (administrative coordinator), Modena and Reggio Emilia, Turin, Cagliari. Teachers and scholars from the Universities of Bologna, Messina, Bolzano, Calabria, Milan, and some foreign universities such as Greifswald (Germany), Huddersfield (UK), Bucharest (Romania) also belong to it.

The Centre aims to:

• promote, develop and coordinate studies and research in the field of both conventional and creative metaphors, developing a coherent typology of the different structures on a grammatical and conceptual level, a shared annotation system and an analysis of the various functions of metaphorical expressions in a wide range of literary and utilitarian texts
• promote scientific debate and related publications and offer adequate support for teaching in the field
• stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration initiatives with other university departments and structures, with national and international research organisations, with research units set up in public and private institutions
• organise courses, seminars, activities, study conferences and scientific dissemination initiatives in the above-mentioned subject areas.
• establish research awards or grants, provided that the funding is specifically earmarked for that purpose by the funder
• Encourage technology transfer to companies through the elaboration of joint research and development projects.

CIRSIL - Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sulla Storia degli Insegnamenti Linguistici - CIRSIL brings together scholars from the Universities of Bologna, Genoa, Insubria, Milan, Milan Cattolica, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Naples 'Federico II', Palermo, Pisa, Siena, Turin and Trento. The Centre's purpose is to promote, support and coordinate scientific research in the field of the history of language teaching in modern foreign languages, Italian and classical languages, to foster the collection and exchange of documentation, information and materials suitable for research, also in collaboration with other national and international, public and private organisations and research bodies, and to stimulate initiatives for the transmission and dissemination of research, through conferences, courses and conventions, as well as academic publications. CIRSIL is also the promoter of the online book series "Quaderni del CIRSIL".

CLAVIER - Corpus and Language Variation In English Research - an Inter-University Research Centre that currently includes the Universities of Bari, Bergamo, Calabria, Florence, Milan, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Pisa, Rome 'La Sapienza', Roma Tre and Trieste.

Participants from the Department: Marina Bondi (coordinator), Giuliana Diani, Donatella Malavasi, Franca Poppi, Judith Turnbull.

The aim of the Centre - coordinated by the Department of Philology, Linguistics and Literature of the University of Pisa - is to contribute to an integration of quantitative and qualitative methods in research on language varieties through the tools offered by corpora. The investigation perspectives focus on the dimensions of linguistic variation: diachronic, geographical and socio-cultural, with particular attention to genre and register analysis. The research group of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia focuses their studies on the analysis of linguistic variation related to: disciplines, textual genres and local cultures. Investigation focus on a few privileged discourse areas, devoting particular attention to academic discourse, with a view to an interdisciplinary and interlinguistic comparison, and to professional discourse, especially in the legal, economic-business and political spheres. Among the specific linguistic and textual topics, the following are of particular interest: a) the interactive level of discourse, the lexical tools of attribution and evaluation and discursive markers; b) lexico-semantic areas, lexico-grammatical areas and phraseological phenomena that draw the conceptual map of disciplinary debate in different contexts. A further element of interest is the comparative analysis of the dialogical tools of academic and specialist writing in the media. The focus is as much on varieties of English (in native and non-native contexts) as on the comparison and contact between English and other languages.

Interdepartmental Research Centre on Digital Humanities

DIGITAL HUMANITIES - The laboratory aims to enhance and develop existing skills in the field of 'digital humanities'. This is a fast-developing field of study, which combines the humanities and computer science. It encompasses various areas of interest, ranging from the development of resources for humanities research (digital archives, databases and computational tools for analysis and consultation), to studies on communication in the new media and the dissemination of knowledge through new ways of accessing knowledge, and the development and use of new information technologies for data analysis and multimedia and cross-media communication.

GENDERS AND RELIGIONS (GeR) - Interdisciplinary and interdepartmental group - Established in 2017 at the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies, the Department of Law and the Department of Education and Human Sciences, in connection with the stipulation of the Framework Convention "Gender and Religions/Religiosity" between the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, University of Milan "Bicocca" (proposing body) and numerous other universities and centres in Italy, the group proposes to explore  the possible connections between gender and religions, from an interdisciplinary perspective (for the moment, anthropological, legal, sociological and historical), inclusive and attentive to the complexity of the phenomena and problems that are gradually emerging, in the light of recent or ongoing socio-cultural changes. The GeR is committed, in particular, to carrying out educational exchanges among its members, research activities, public initiatives such as study seminars, conferences, conventions and book presentations.

GLIC_D - Gender, Language and Communication_Digital Laboratory

Participants belonging to the Department: Cecilia Robustelli (coordinator), Vincenzo Gannuscio, Silvia Modena

The GLiC_D laboratory intends to examine the use of gender language in the context of digital public communication, and in particular of the Digital Public Administration and the Digital Agenda for Europe, as a necessary tool to "ensure full and effective participation of women and equal leadership opportunities at every level of decision-making in politics, economics and public life" (goal 5.5 of the UN 2030 Agenda). The research focuses on the Italian, French, English, Spanish and German languages for which the DSLC has a number of specialists.

LABETNO - Laboratory of Ethnology - The Laboratory of Ethnology aims to promote, realise and coordinate research activities in the anthropological, ethnological and ethnographic fields, in collaboration with other disciplines, primarily historical, philosophical, political, sociological and psychological.

LAMA - Audiovisual Materials Laboratory - was created with the aim of providing resources and ideas for humanistic research, in particular for those disciplines central to the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies. LAMA is located within and consistent with the objectives of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Digital Communication and is in close dialogue with the Department's other laboratories. 

LAMA will have a role in analysing, collecting, archiving and proposing methods, tools and audiovisual products for research and teaching. In particular, LAMA's objectives and actions will be geared towards:

1. Creating opportunities for reflection and discussion on the meanings, roles, functions and uses of audiovisual materials in the humanities (REFLECTION AND ANALYSIS).
2. Proposing and initiating research paths that use audiovisual tools or that focus on audiovisual products (METHODS and TOOLS).
3. Providing proposals for improving and enhancing teaching through the use of audiovisual materials (LEARNING).
4. Making available equipment, software, data and suggesting innovative practices for the use of audiovisual materials for the dissemination and communication of the processes and results of the research carried out by the members of the Department (PRODUCTION).

LAMA also aims to foster relations with individuals operating outside the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies who have specific skills and interests in the scientific reflection on audiovisuals and the production of audiovisual materials significant for humanistic research.

LAMA deals with the scientific and theoretical issues that Anglo-Saxon academic terminology most commonly describes as 'visual studies'. It deals with the audiovisual in its various forms, taking into account the long and well defined tradition of research on these topics. In particular, the so-called visual turn (or iconic or pictorial turn) places the image and the audiovisual at the centre of research in various disciplines, affirming the need to deal with the phenomenology of visuality for literature, philosophy, linguistics, economics, history, anthropology, social sciences, etc.

LAMA is based on the assumption that: a) it is of fundamental importance for the contemporary world to reformulate the question of the status and methods of the image and the audiovisual; b) the heterogeneous forms of visuality today are inevitably interdependent; c) the area of interference between these forms of visuality leads to new possible interpretations and can establish connections between phenomena that formally seem incompatible.

MODENA LEXI-TERM - The "Modena Lexi-Term" Research Group brings together scholars of lexicography and terminology who find in the automatic processing of lexical and terminological information the meeting point of two distinct paths of exploration of special languages (the semasiological and the onomasiological) within the framework of a common interest in textual aspects. The group operates both on a theoretical and application level. The objectives are not only the elaboration and/or evaluation of methodological models for the collection and description of lexical units of special languages, but also the elaboration of mono- and multilingual lexicographic or terminological collections in various specialised fields, the creation of graphical representations of conceptual/terminological systems and training activities (provision of training courses in lexicography and terminography, elaboration of thematic training modules with the writing of teaching materials, thesis direction).

History of Migration - Laboratory - The history of united Italy, even more so than that of other European nations, cannot be told without resorting to an accurate analysis of migratory movements. Yet interdisciplinary studies on the subject continue to be scarce, as if the movement of large masses of people did not deeply affect the economic, cultural and political life of the country. New paradigms are needed to represent the phenomenon of migratory mobility, as demonstrated by the demand for cultural recognition coming from the "Italians in the world", who claim unprecedented forms of citizenship, which no longer stay within the nation, but neither do they allow themselves to be caged within rigid ethnic borders. Migrations then as transnational mobility, identity relations that are maintained despite borders. One belongs to a constellation of places. Being a 'citizen of the world' in fact entails, rather than an Olympic 'cosmopolitan' detachment, the ability to feel part of the whole in all its transnational partiality. Phenomena that are not easy to decode, requiring different approaches. It is a matter of scientifically equipping ourselves to bring seemingly distant worlds into close proximity, learning their linguistic codes and doing the correct work of narrative restitution. Historiography must be combined with the study of cultural systems, the work of sifting archive documents must go hand in hand with the collection of a repertoire of present memories. There is a whole social and institutional world that demands up-to-date interpretative keys to read these phenomena in the contemporary world from the venues deputed to research. To become an authentic and permeable place of cultural elaboration and research, this is the idea behind the Laboratory of Migration History.