Giovanni Giorgini

Università di Bologna

Civic Pedagogies, Cultural Identity and the Issue of Liberal Education in Italy

2003-2004

Giovanni Giorgini is an Associate Professor of the History of Political Thought in the Philosophy Department of the University of Bologna. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, where he was Visiting Fellow in 1999. He received his degree in Philosophy at the University of Bologna and his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Turin. His research interests include ancient political thought (Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, the Sophists) and the revival of classical political thought by contemporary writers such as Stuart Hampshire, Martha Nussbaum, Leo Strauss, and Alasdair MacIntyre. He is the author of three books: La città e il tiranno (1993), an investigation of ancient Greek tyranny in the conceptual history tradition, Liberalismi eretici (1999), a critical examination of some contemporary liberal authors, and I doni di Pandora (2002), a study of ancient Greek political thought from the origins to 4th century B.C., which tries to combine the approaches of political theory, ancient history and the history of ideas.
At the Italian Academy, Professor Giorgini will work on the reform of curricula in contemporary Italy in the face of multiculturalism, using an approach deriving from the neo-Aristotelian focus on a common human nature and the importance of liberal education.