Our story

The Department of Lettere, Lingue e Beni Culturali can boast a wide range of scientific skills and teaching in multiple humanities disciplines. The geographical and cultural contexts of the Mediterranean and Europe are the primary focus of research, but interest extends in some sectors to other areas of the world, such as the Americas, India, Africa, the Far East. Temporal contexts range from prehistory to history in its four fundamental ages.

In the philological and literary fields, research moves from antiquity (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Hebrew), to the analysis of  the rise of national traditions in the medieval period (Romance, Germanic, Slavic), to studying the development in the modern and contemporary world of different national European literatures (Italian, English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Sardinian, Catalan, Arabic), also from the perspective of comparative literature. Specific attention is given to the case of Semitic languages with the peculiar situation of Arabic. Linguistic studies range from comparative historical and typological linguistics (Indo-European languages, Mediterranean languages) to the synchronic linguistics of Italian, Sardinian, English, French, German, Russian, Arabic and Chinese. Particular attention is paid to applied linguistics in the field of language teaching. Fields of research such as semiotics act as a link between linguistic and literary interests and other areas of humanistic studies.

Likewise, many key research activities focus on history (ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary); epigraphy, archival science and palaeography; archaeology (prehistoric, classical, Christian, medieval), history of art (classical, medieval, modern and contemporary), geography (physical, human, regional, historical) and cultural anthropology. Studies in  the vast area of cultural heritage are particularly concerned with the construction of the concept of ‘cultural heritage’ itself, its social applications as well as the possible effects on the territory in terms of both the transfer of knowledge and skills and the public enjoyment and cultural development of such assets. This provides the basis for the development of numerous projects especially in the archival, historical-artistic and archaeological fields. An intense activity of research, teaching and optimisation is also carried out in the study fields of musics, theatre, cinema and audiovisual products, often projected towards new research methods with an interdisciplinary vocation.