This is a project for higher education student and staff mobility between Programme Countries and Partner Countries. Please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

"The JM Chair will focus on the European supranational democratic model - one of its kind - but also on citizens’ rights, on transparency and civic participation. The main reasons for the JMC project “Legal Theory of European Integration: a Supranational Democracy Model?” at Unisalento are: (i) contributing to the development of European Studies and specifically of EU Law within Unisalento and in Southern Italy; (ii) enhancinge the research and the critical thinking on Europe and democracy among students and young scholars, so to make them more conscious as European citizens, European jurists and European scholars; (iii) spreading awareness on European democracy and citizens’ rights in the academic community and in the public opinion; (iv) fostering the dialogue between the academic world, civil society, policy-makers and other relevant stakeholders on European democratic governance and civic participation’s rights.The JMC will affect students at different levels: the main course ""Legal Theory of European Integration: a Supranational Democracy Model?"" Is addressed to undergraduate Law students and will have a more theoretical, yet innovative cut. It will be embedded in the curriculum of the Master’s Degree in Law. The modules “Case-Law on Civic Rights in the European Union” - a training course for future practitioners of EU Law- will be offered twice a year, to master students and to students of the Specialization School for Legal Professionals. The seminar “EU as a Lab for Supranational Democracy Worldwide” will be offered to PhD students and young scholars, thus meeting students’ need to become European jurists in any role they will decide to spend their academic expertise. This JM Chair will also comprise the Supranational Democracy Dialogues, an annual international high-level inter-disciplinary event, targeting academics, civil society and policy-makers to affect all the relevant stakeholders."

This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from EU Member States and third countries associated to Erasmus+ to any country in the world. Students in all study fields and cycles can take part in a study period or traineeship abroad. Higher education teaching and administrative staff can take part in professional development activities abroad, as well as staff from the field of work in order to teach and train students or staff at higher education institutions.

The recent lockdown brought the commercial interaction of everyday life to a stop for most people in the world at almost the same time. This resulted in a general isolation that highlighted the extraordinary relevance of economic exchanges, also from a social and existential perspective. This experience showed how unfounded it is to think that exchange is just a matter of self-interest, as is believed both by those who criticize commerce for destroying social bonds and traditional ethical systems, and those who, on the contrary, unconditionally defend the market economy. This reduction of exchange to a matter of self-interest was not present in the formative stage of political economy when, in the late 18th century, the conceptualization of commerce was bound up with discussion on the origin of human society, and a richer connection between exchange, speech and sociability was conceived. It is thus a task of the utmost importance to rethink economic exchange today by reconsidering in their historical and theoretical depth the multidisciplinary debates on human nature, on the origin of sociability and of language. To this end, the project will be organised around three major axes associated with the following controversies: a) self-love and exchange in the debate on human nature; b) sociability, values and exchange in the debate on primitive societies; c) speech and exchange in the debate on the origin of language. The project will explore the connections between these different disputes which originated in Europe in the 17th century in the nascent disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, economic science. An interdisciplinary perspective will be adopted, combining the different kinds of sources ranging over time from the Essays of Montaigne to the works of Adam Smith. Thanks to this enlarged study on the origins of the modern concept of exchange, the project aims to provide a new definition of economic relationships, as well as a new hypothesis on economic agency.