The new Department of Historical Sciences and Cultural Heritage aims to bring together a significant series of intellectual resources of proven excellence in the areas of historical disciplines, archeology, the history of arts and entertainment, and the history of philosophy.
In the variety of methods and objects of study, they have in common the study of human societies and productions - at every level: political and economic, cultural and philosophical, documentary, artistic and entertainment - in their relationship with time , and with spaces.
DIFFERENT METHODS AND CHRONOLOGIES, ONE SAME SUBJECT
The methods of scientific research and reflection may vary: from archaeological to historical-artistic, from historical-philosophical to that of the performing arts, from the archival and paleographic to the more general historical research. Even the periods studied are in the widest chronological range: from prehistory to antiquity, from the Middle Ages to the modern age up to the contemporary. The spatial dimension of the study can be diversified: from the reference microterritory of the most localized studies to the national dimension, from the Euro-Mediterranean context to the global one. In such a common variety, however, is the central object of the department's activities: the study of human societies over time and their various and complex productions, from material culture to artistic productions and in general cultural heritage, from philosophical reflections to political institutions, social and - again - cultural created over the millennia, however taking into account the new technologies, used and studied in the dual role of new contemporary products and tools that allow the analysis and study of the past.
RESULTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
The convergence of studies among the various disciplinary areas that the Department has built up over time has consolidated a series of results that are now presented as undisputed opportunities for the new structure: the construction and consolidation of a vast network of international collaborations enshrined in official conventions; the presence of the teachers of the various areas of the department in nodes of relationships, interuniversity and university research centers, international and national; a constant access to sources of external financing of great importance both from a quantitative point of view as well as from the rank of financers; conducting research programs of national interest and often of great resonance within the scientific community, not only nationally; the constant relationship with the institutions both regional and local and with the civil society at the territorial-Sienese level, always very attentive to the centrality of the historical and cultural heritage, to its knowledge and its valorisation.
A CONSOLIDATED COLLABORATION BETWEEN DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES
The Department was established in 2011 and is strongly oriented towards scientific innovation: it takes advantage of previous collaborations and intertwining of the disciplines that have long characterized the areas and the teachers who work there. History, archeology, history of the arts, performing arts and history of philosophy have maintained in Siena, in previous departmental organizations and in graduate and post-graduate courses that were intertwined, fruitful relationships of exchange and scientific cooperation, which have made natural establishment of a common department. Regardless of the subject-specific scientific-disciplinary sectors, researchers and researchers found themselves side by side in research centers, laboratories, research doctorates whose aim was the study of human societies, their productions and their sedimentations in terms of cultural heritage, of artistic objects, institutions, documents and texts