This two-year EF will bring me at Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy), where I will be supervised by Prof. Marco Sgarbi. The overall aim of the project is to provide the first, complete historical-philosophical reconstruction of the Academia secretorum naturae, one of the earliest Societies in Europe, to explore in an innovative way the "secrets of nature", by performing experiments in the field of physico-chemical and mechanical sciences. The Academy was founded in Naples in 1560 by Giambattista Della Porta (1535-1615), one of the leading figures of the Italian Renaissance in natural philosophy, so much so, tha the echoes of his thought reached authors like Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Isaac Newton. The scientific activity of the Academy is able to be reconstructed by reading the "Magia Naturalis" by Della Porta. A study on the experimentalism promoted in Naples by the Academia secretorum naturae, which is at the core of the project, will significantly influence our understanding of the Italian Renaissance and its contribution to the so-called Scientific Revolution/rise of experimentalism. Research will aid in determining certain fundamental junctures between the shift from natural magic to the new science, clarifying the role of the peculiar empirical Aristotelianism, open to the instances of natural magic, mathematics, and practical knowledge, in vogue in the Naples of the 16th century; of the introduction of a clear codification of the experimental process of the secrets of nature, as of a readily identifiable scientific instrumentation introduced in Della Porta's Academy. The clarification of these two points will lead an understanding of how experimentalism, which developed in Italy during the Renaissance and spread throughout Europe thanks to the enormous popularity of "Magia naturalis", impacted the great European scientific academies of the 17th century.

The European monetary authorities, as well as most central banks, are currently pursuing the objective of reducing the Quantitative Easing and normalize interest rates. A clear understanding of the forces underlying the movements in interest rates has thus become a timely and very relevant issue. In particular, a challenging task for policymakers is the estimation in real time of the unobservable term premium, which provides a measure of the investors’ perceived risk of holding government bonds. The purpose of the EUTERPE (EUropean TERm Premium Estimation) project is to implement an innovative system producing timely and reliable estimates of the term premium and its components for government bonds of the Euro Area (EA). The project aims to fill an important gap in the existing literature by proposing an integrated procedure which relies on a novel multi-country term structure model with interrelation between yield curves, macro variables, volatility, and global factors. EUTERPE intends to equip the European policymakers with a new analytical tool for their monetary policy decisions and has potentially various applications in the financial industry, thereby representing a way to use knowledge in Europe effectively for business and policy purposes. The specific training activity in research and transferable skills, the outstanding profile of the Supervisor, the excellent research environment offered by the host institution, and the interaction with a first-class network of European policymakers and research institutions are all factors which will contribute to increase my professional maturity and will allow me to restart a career in research at an advanced level. In particular, the publication of the results in highly reputable scientific journals and the other dissemination activities will strengthen my profile both for European universities and for research departments of international financial institutions and will open up new interesting career opportunities.

Aquaculture expansion is a necessary step to respond to increase protein demands while limiting the reliance on wild fisheries and imports.Bivalve aquaculture is considered to be one of the most sustainable, although some potentially negative environmental impacts arising from high deposition rates of faces and pseudofaces on the seabed have been identified. Habitat restoration management can be integrated within aquaculture practices to limit their negative impacts and it can bring positive environmental changes while obtaining both economical and cultural returns.This project aims to integrate restoration with aquaculture, namely the reintroduction of native flat Oyster reefs under mussels culture sites and harvest oyster spat recruiting as seeds in the original farm area to obtain economical returns and start a local oyster farming chain, while leaving the reef intact to provide ecosystem services. The main aim is to identify the best practices for this integration, in terms of size, stock densities and environmental conditions necessary to obtain maximum benefits in terms of both harvestable product and ecosystem services. This will be done combining modelling and experimental approaches, with a pilot site in the northern Adriatic sea. This approach will be included in the global environmental change scenario, and environmental optimals will be found where is possible to employ these strategies for maximum return in order to extend the theories beyond our study system. The results of this project will benefit mutiple stakeholders, from fishermen to policy to scientists working in similar areas. The outcomes will move forward the concept of integrating practices to obtain greatest sustainability without impeding economical advances. I aim to publish results in the form of scientific peer review articles and as a tool box guideline for best practices.

Corruption is an important challenge in the contemporary world. In the EU, it has been a major concern due to the misuse of structural funds, now rising again with the acceptance of Ukraine and Moldova as new candidates. Transparency is the key corruption prevention measure promoted by international institutions, but at the local level the extent of its implementation and effectiveness against corruption remains underexplored. The goal of this project is to analyse what impact the internationalisation of public policies generates locally for the effective use of transparency as an anti-corruption tool. How are international recommendations regarding transparency applied at the local level? How does the success or failure of anti-corruption policies depend on the locally adopted transparency measures? To what extent is the effectiveness of transparency as an anti-corruption tool at the local level explained by the influence of international institutions? The project will analyse three sector-specific cases examining the effectiveness of transparency-based anti-corruption policies at the local level and the influence of international institutions on it in an "old" EU member state, a "new" EU member and an EU candidate country. Its novelty consists in the focus on local-level structures and processes and specific economic sectors (maritime cargo transportation, tourism and residential construction). It will bring valuable insights about the challenges of transferring policies developed in one socio-political context to the other and provide a novel contribution to the literature on internationalisation of norms and policies, empirical effects of transparency and comparative politics. The researcher's previous work in the EU periphery, current work on public integrity, supervision by an expert on transparency in the EU at a host with a long record of comparative research and a placement at Transparency International make sure that the project goals will be attained.