Concept
The PhD program addresses the broad theme of contemporaneity across the various fields concerning the production, conservation, and enhancement of theatrical, visual, and performing arts, as well as applied arts, design, and graphic design for public utility. The program is structured into three curricula, each addressing specific problems, methodologies, and solutions, responding to different yet closely linked needs. All the curricula share foundational themes such as digital transition, sustainability, internationalisation, reorganisation of tangible and intangible heritage, and the dialogue between art and science.
Curriculum 1. Theatrical Archives and Repertoires: documents, costumes, set design projects, stage techniques, repertoires, dramaturgies, contemporary performances.
This curriculum is structured around research projects aimed at the study and cataloguing of archival, costume, set design, stagecraft, and dramaturgical heritage of several important Italian theaters. This study area and cataloguing process constitutes a significant innovation within the current research landscape of many Italian theatrical institutions and is aimed at enhancing and making publicly accessible a heritage constantly at risk, as well as supporting future visions of preservation and restoration.
The curriculum focuses on digital archiving projects of documents, costume, set design, and stagecraft materials and contemporary dramaturgical repertoires, with particular reference to the classical tradition, including prose, dance, and opera. Special attention will be given to research proposals with a strong focus on digital and environmental transitions and the internationalisation of archives, including their enhancement, ongoing development, efficiency, sustainability, and technological innovation needs in line with the most recent developments in the reorganisation of tangible and intangible heritage. Proposals that include digital archives offering a multidisciplinary approach and capable of interacting with various databases – including international and open-source platforms such as Europeana – are particularly encouraged.
In the evaluation process, particular importance is given to the notion of ‘repertoire,’ following the distinction proposed by Diana Taylor within the school of Richard Schechner. In this perspective, it is a way of preserving and transmitting knowledge through an embodied dimension, based on the genealogies of performance in theater and all that pertains to the immanent nature of performance, including rituals and ceremonies.
Curriculum 2. Visual Communication Design and Public Utility
This curriculum is oriented toward research projects that explore and reflect on the figure of the design scholar-practitioner and professionals in the field of visual communication design and public utility. It also seeks to support research projects focused on the transmission and communication of values embodied in local and international artistic and cultural heritage.
Graphic design for public utility differs from commercial design in its cultural approach to graphic and communicative practice, developing a critical perspective shaped by women and men who have used graphic design as a tool for civic engagement – encouraging citizens to observe, understand, and respond, fostering active consent and greater responsibility in society.
The graphic designer performs a technical and intellectual activity aimed at achieving a goal (rather than art for art’s sake). Design includes a range of communication artefacts across various fields: from the visual identity design of public and private institutions for the production of cultural events and exhibitions, to editorial design of books, catalogues, and monographs, and series layouts for mass distribution, all the way to socially responsible graphic design for the community – graphic design committed to civil engagement, upholding principles of freedom, dignity, rights, and inclusion, regardless of ethnicity, gender, or political orientation.
The objective is to train researchers interested in the critical-methodological and applied aspects of Visual Communication Design and Public Utility. It is to design with a new awareness of the intellectual and social responsibility connected to graphic design.
In the context of technological and digital transition, graphic design opens new avenues of inquiry, exploring new methods, tools, and processes for innovation and development of a culture of design.
Curriculum 3. New Contemporary Methodologies in Visual, Performing, and Applied Arts
This curriculum encourages research projects based on hypotheses, reflections, and comparisons regarding the current methodologies of visual arts in relation to the spread of symbolic, digital, and social platforms as spaces of constant visual overload and, at the same time, as places of profiling and linguistic and artistic production that add to traditional exhibition spaces.
Particularly relevant are studies on the current and future potential of imagination as a divergent human faculty – at once cybernetic and artificial; research on the influence of applied sciences and technology on the quality and quantity of contemporary artistic production; and analyses of the dematerialisation process affecting body, style, and fashion as frontier themes in current visual and performing art practices.
Specific consideration is thus given to research topics that explore the international development of artistic methods and thought in response to the growing prevalence of predefined and homogenising models shaping the formalisation of the artwork. These models can be examined either from an aesthetic perspective or through ethical, cultural, geographical, and political lenses. Contemporaneity is interpreted not merely as a source of solutions, but as a generator and disseminator of artworks that function as critical points.
In the evaluation process, high value is also given to in-depth, structured research that carefully considers museums, galleries, exhibitions, movements, artists, cultural legacies, and evolutionary phases characterising the history of visual arts in relation to a cross-disciplinary perspective. This approach reads contemporary art in the context of a fragmented time, now connected to immersive, sonic, and performative technical modalities, also inspired by the demands of digital and environmental transitions.
Objectives
The primary aim of the course is the definition of a field of artistic, historical, heritage-related, critical, and curatorial investigation which, at the first cycle of AFAM PhD programs, appears still in the process of finding clearly defined boundaries. Its title aims to combine fundamental and enduring keywords and phrases, such as heritage, rituals/ceremonies, with the frontiers of post-contemporaneity, which are today shaped by a culture of innovation, by digital and environmental transitions, by processes of internationalisation, dematerialisation, enhancement, implementation, multidisciplinarity, and by the online sharing of results, within a perspective of ‘audience studies’ aligned with the broad and democratic framework of ‘open sources.’
Some of these elements are already widely explored in university-level studies and research, both theoretical and practice-based. This marks the first attempt to apply these findings to artistic production and practices, and to artistic design for enterprise, with the intent of freeing them from the notion and concept of art for art’s sake, while instead pursuing a path of ‘public utility’.
The characteristics of the project are thus perfectly aligned with the objectives of the European Community, and in particular with the guidelines outlined by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), with a view to full Quality Assurance within the European Higher Education Area.
Expected Professional and Employment Outcomes
Third-level training is intended to guide PhD candidates from the realm of purely speculative studies (theoretical and theoretical-practical) toward the full and mature definition of their own artistic and professional identity.
Assuming that such a process of transition is already underway in the candidates, as they are already familiar with best practices through their previous first- and second-level educational experiences, the objective of the AFAM PhD in Sciences of Artistic Production and Heritage is to strengthen in each candidate the highest-level artistic and professional skills, facilitating the transition toward a knowledge-based digital economy, its internationalisation, and the widest ethical sharing of knowledge. Accordingly, the program aims to contribute to the definition of new professional figures in art and culture, specifically oriented toward ‘smart specialisation’, and highly adaptable to the post-digital transformations of future societies.
Given the high level of technological, interdisciplinary, and linguistic specialisation that the program as a whole requires, the resulting PhD profile will be able to find opportunities within a broad and inclusive cultural and artistic sector, ranging from professions related to archival and cataloguing work in heritage, to curatorial roles, and to visual communication design for public and private bodies, institutions, and companies, both in Italy and abroad.
Consistency with the Objectives of the PNRR
In alignment with the objectives of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), the AFAM PhD Program in Sciences of Artistic Production and Heritage ensures:
- a. significant impact on the local job market, thanks to the close relationship that the partner institutions have established with important cultural, artistic, and entrepreneurial organisations within their respective areas of influence;
- b. utmost attention to the dematerialization processes of knowledge and heritage, through systematic digital and environmental transition strategies;
- c. substantial increase in the number of scholars engaged in research-oriented activities within the fields of artistic production and cultural heritage.
More generally, the objectives and research methodology implemented in the doctoral program are:
- a. consistent with the objectives and aims of Regulation (EU) 2021/241 and with the general strategy and the detailed Component Sheet of the PNRR;
- b. oriented towards the achievement of results assessed against measurable targets assigned, if applicable, to the Investment, in accordance with the terms established by the Plan;
- c. compliant with the principle of “do no significant harm” (DNSH), pursuant to Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852, in accordance with the technical guidance issued by the European Commission (Communication from the European Commission 2021/C58/01);
- d. suitable for fostering gender equality;
- e. supportive of the participation of women and young people, also in line with the provisions of Decree-Law No. 77 of 31 May 2021 (known as the “Simplification Decree”), as amended by the Conversion Law No. 108 of 29 July 2021, concerning the management of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).
For all these reasons, the AFAM PhD Program in Sciences of Artistic Production and Heritage guarantees a timely and well-structured response to the challenges of the 21st century.