Today, mobility is a key factor related to migration, transport, mass tourism, global trade and the circulation of digital information and to their impacts on urban transformations. Beyond everyday perception, mobility is also a new paradigm in the social sciences and humanities that looks beyond immobile socio-economic structures and fixed cultural identities to provide a new understanding of past and present societies. The two-year MA programme in mobility studies is driven by the belief that the humanities – and history in particular – can play a crucial role in understanding and addressing mobility in modern society. Far from focusing uniquely on the circulation of people, objects and ideas in given historical and geographical frameworks, the MA aims to provide students with a selection of specific tools in historical, geographical, anthropological and philological studies to challenge the traditional understanding of human actions in both time and space. Students will be immersed in the process through which people, texts, images, artefacts, commodities and ideas are moved, translated, transformed, adapted and negotiated by different social actors – sometimes in distant spatial contexts – in the past and in the present. Since global and local scenarios call for new experts who are trained in historical and cultural studies but ready for political and social action today, such an interdisciplinary education at an international level and enriched by inter-sectoral experiences is fundamental to overcoming the current difficulties that young humanists face when approaching the job market.

Students will have the opportunity

• to meet visiting professors from relevant academic institutions from around the world,
• to apply for supplementary funding for Erasmus+ outgoing mobility,
• to apply for scholarships and study prizes, and
• to pursue an internship programme with Italian and foreign partners.