The University of Florence can trace its origins to the Studium, which was established in 1321, and is one of the largest organisations for research and higher education in Italy with over 1,900 tenured teaching staff and researchers, over 1,600 permanent technical/administrative staff and language assistants and over 55,000 students. The University consists of 24 departments. A large part of the yearly budget is allocated to scientific research. Recently, the University of Florence has been ranked first among Italian universities for the distribution of national research funds. The University of Florence is one of the largest and most productive public research systems in Italy. This result is related to the number of permanent and temporary researchers working in a wide range of disciplines and scientific fields and the numerous junior scientists in training. Due to the level of funding we receive, we have been able to participate in intensive research programmes of national and international importance in which significant scientific results have been achieved and the knowledge transferred. The researchers from the various departments of the University of Florence have at their disposal several research structures comprising interdepartmental and inter-university centres, as well as some specialised research units and laboratories.
The TransSOL project is hosted in the Department of Legal Sciences (DSG). The DSG was created in January 2013, melting together all existing legal sciences departments to enhance legal research in an open, multidisciplinary and stimulating environment. The Department has 109 academics and brings together renowned and experienced scholars, as well as a number of research projects funded by the Italian Research Council, the Italian University Ministry, the European Commission and other national and international agencies. Past and current research projects hosted by the Department include research on Globalization and Law, Environmental Regulations, Recent Trends in Constitutionalism, Regional Statutes, the Nature of Government, Electoral Laws, the Case Law of both the European Court of Justice of the EU and of the Court for the Protection of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Authorities and Public Service Regulation, Migration and Social Entrepreneurship. While specialising in legal studies, the research team at DSG is strongly characterised by its interdisciplinarity, bringing together public comparative law, European law, administrative law and legal sociology scholars.
We invite you to visit the Italian TransSOL website.
Team members
Carlo Fusa
ro is the principal investigator of the Italian team. Since 2000, he has been a Full Professor in Comparative Constitutional Law in the Department of Laws, University of Florence. He graduated in International Law (1974, University of Florence) and later became a researcher and an Associate Professor (Pisa University). He directed the late Department of Public Law (2004-2007). He has participated in and led several research projects financed by the United States Institute of Peace and the Italian University Ministry. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Bremen, UCL (London) and Hiroshima Shudo University (Hiroshima). He has been a consultant for local and regional governments and for the Italian presidency of the council of minister. He has chaired the San Marino Constitutional Court since 2014. His main fields of expertise are systems of government, electoral laws, parliamentary regulations, local public services regulations and laws concerning local entities.
For up-to-date info, please visit his staff page.
Veronica Fe
derico is Lecturer in Comparative Public Law in the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Florence and research fellow at Boston College (Massachusetts, USA) in the BC study-abroad program in Italy. Veronica obtained her PhD in March 2005 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She holds a Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies, obtained in 1998 at the EHESS in Comparative Studies on Development and a Diploma di laurea in Political Science from the University of Florence, Italy. In November 2013, she obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification of Associate Professor in Comparative Law. She was a research associate with the School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (2001-04) and visiting scholar with the Centre d’Etudes Africaines of the EHESS in 2008. She has obtained several research awards and grants, among which are the following: two grants from the Italian National Council for Research (CNR), a NATO scholarship and a two-year research grant of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). She has been involved in several national and international research projects, financed and supported by public and private entities (inter alia: Italian Ministry for Research and University, regional government of Tuscany, Oxfam). Her research interests include: African studies; African Comparative Constitutional Law; Fundamental Rights; Constitutional and Democratic Transitions; French Constitutional Law and Politics; Citizenship; and Social Enterprise.
Nicola Maggini is a Research Fellow in the Department of Legal Sciences of the University of Florence and a member of CISE (Italian Centre for Electoral Studies). He has been a Teaching Assistant for a sociology module at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome, and he currently teaches Italian Political System at Middlebury College (Florence). He holds a BA in Political Science with Distinction (2005), an MA in Political Science with Distinction (2008) from the University of Florence and a PhD with Distinction from the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (SUM) of Florence (2012). He has been a Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Florence from 2012 to 2015. He has published in Italian and international scientific journals and has co-edited several volumes for the Dossier CISE series. Currently, he is working on a book for Palgrave on young people’s voting behaviour in Europe. His main research interests are socio-political attitudes, electoral systems, voting behaviour and party competition in comparative perspective. His academic work deals primarily with quantitative research and statistical analysis of cross-national surveys.
Ester di N
apoli is a researcher in TransSOL. She holds a double Law degree (Italian-Spanish) from the University of Florence and from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2009). In 2011, she attended the summer courses in Public and Private International Law at the Hague Academy of International Law. She holds a PhD in Private International Law, obtained in 2013 from the University of Padua with a thesis on EU conflict-of-laws rules in family matters. In 2014, Ester was a research fellow in EU Law at the University of Cagliari, conducting her research on ‘The European Competition Law and the Sovereign Debt Crisis’. Since July 2010, she has been a teaching assistant in International Law at the University of Ferrara. She is admitted to the Spanish (Madrid, 2008) and Italian (Florence, 2013) Bar. Her publications and main areas of interest concern Private International Law at the European and international levels in the field of Family Law.