3rd Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School – Collaboration and Co-creation in Italian Studies

3rd Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School 

Dates: 7-8 July 2022

Organisers: Cecilia Brioni, Clodagh Brook

Speakers: Cecilia Brioni (Trinity College Dublin), Simone Brioni (Stony Brook University), Clodagh Brook (Trinity College Dublin), Derek Duncan (University of St Andrews), Martina Mendola (Trinity College Dublin/Accenture), Giuliana Pieri (Royal Holloway University of London)

General Information

This Summer School is directed at Early Career Academics, Lecturers/Assistant Professors and Doctoral students in Italian Studies who are interested in collaborative research practices, creative research outputs, producing impact within and beyond academia, and preparing collaborative research grants. It is organised by the Interdisciplinary Italy: Interart/Intermedia research group and the Department of Italian at Trinity College Dublin, with the support of the Irish Research Council and the Society for Italian Studies.

Description

As contemporary cultures become increasingly convergent, multifaceted and transnational, their analysis entails intellectual, artistic and societal challenges which cannot be resolved by single individuals. Collaboration among people with different expertise and theoretical and methodological backgrounds is therefore critical. Lupton and Dyson (2015) argue that ‘knowledge of the social world must be deeper and stronger if it is co-produced with actors in that world; research is more likely to effect change if it is owned by people who have a capacity to effect change’. Work is ongoing in our field to understand how best we can effect societal change, or share research which is relevant to, for instance, artists, practitioners, activists, students, businesses, and teachers.

The 3rd Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School aims to offer a platform for collaborative reflection on these themes by bringing together experiences of co-creation between academics in the field of Italian Studies and photographers (Derek Duncan), directors and writers (Simone Brioni), secondary-school students (Giuliana Pieri), undergraduate students (Cecilia Brioni), and industry (Martina Mendola). We will explore the following questions:

• How does co-creation of research actually work in practice?
• How can we as researchers think creatively about opportunities for collaboration in, and emerging from, our own research?
• How can co-creation be leveraged to support us in winning research funding grants?

Learning Outcomes

This summer school will:

• Provide participants with the theoretical and methodological tools to carry out collaborative research within and beyond academia;
• Invite participants to reflect collaboratively on how to make academic research impactful for our students, for arts, cultural practitioners and industry, and for the general public.
• Ask participants to actively think about research as a co-creation, include collaborative practices in their projects and/or adopt a collaborative approach in their research outcomes.
• Create hands-on experience of collaborative research grant generation.

Format

Sessions will take place on Thursday 7^th and Friday 8^th July, from 10 am to 5.30 pm each day.  Each session will include a talk by a speaker about their experience of collaboration and co-creation, and either a seminar discussion or a workshop led by the speaker.

Sessions

• Clodagh Brook (Trinity College Dublin) – Approaching Co-creation. A Short Position Paper
• Cecilia Brioni (Trinity College Dublin) – Using YouTube for Research Collaboration and Curricula Co-Creation with Undergraduates
• Simone Brioni (Stony Brook University) – Beyond the Frame: Collaboration as a Decolonial Practice
• Derek Duncan (University of St Andrews) – Working with Mario Badagliacca: Arts-Based Research and the Borders of Competence
• Martina Mendola (Trinity College Dublin/Accenture) – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences for Business Innovation
• Giuliana Pieri (Royal Holloway University of London) – Co-Curating a Pop-Up Exhibition with Students (Interart in Schools Project)

A full abstract for each session can be found at this Padlet page.

Deliverables

The culminating activity of the Summer School will be a Research Sandpit session, where participants will be assigned to break-out groups in which they will develop a collective research question and think together how this might be prepared for a research grant (e.g. rationale/outputs). At the end of the sandpit, we will have a session in which participants will present their collective projects for funding to a panel of judges, who will award small prizes to the best projects.

• Projects generatedmay be taken forward after the Summer School, if suitable.
• Learnings from sandpitformat can be brought by participants to their own institutions to generate collaborative research grants with partners/participants’ departments/Schools etc.
• After the Summer School, participants may prepare, if they so wish, a blog post for the Interdisciplinary Italy website about their research projects, in which they illustrate how questions of collaboration and co-creation affect their research. Blogs will be peer reviewed by the website editors and published if suitable.

Thanks to the generous funding from the Irish Research Council and the Society for Italian Studies, the Summer School will be free of charge for participants. Coffee breaks and lunches will be provided. Informal social evenings will be organised. Please arrange your own accommodation.

There is a limited number of places available, therefore we ask to send a short cover letter (300 words) explaining your interest in the Summer School to Cecilia Brioni at brionic@tcd.ie by 30 May 2022. Selected candidates will be those whose research or teaching interests seem the most aligned with the Summer School. Communication of acceptance will be given on 6 June 2022.

Any queries can be sent directly to the Summer School organisers, Cecilia Brioni (brionic@tcd.ie) and Clodagh Brook (brookc@tcd.ie).