Posts
Watching El Cid – Anthony Mann’s movie – half a century after its release in 1961 it gives an unmistakable sensation of déjà vu. The representations of yesterday’s villains, the black-clad, fanatical hordes ready to “sweep up from Africa” and conquer “first Spain, then Europe and the whole world” carry
Posts
Research report on the qualitative comparative analysis for the ALTERNATIVE project (FP7): “Developing alternative understandings of security and justice through restorative justice approaches in intercultural settings within democratic societies” (2012-2014) Read the full report (pdf) on the ALTERNATIVE project website ALTERNATIVE media platform (videos etc.) Executive summary The ALTERNATIVE project
Projects
The ALTERNATIVE project (FP7, 2012-2016) is about Developing alternative understandings of security and justice through restorative justice approaches in intercultural settings within democratic societies. At the project’s core there are four intensive case studies (which mainly take the form of action research activities) built around, supported by and mutually
Posts
The so-called ‘Copenhagen school’ of security studies has stirred the waters of international relations theory, and perhaps of social sciences in general, since the mid 1990s. It is defined by its trademark epistemological move, reflexively defining security – or rather securitisation – through a speech-act and its consequences (‘it doesn’t matter
Posts
Restorative Justice (RJ) is a way of responding to criminal wrongdoing or more generally – and tentatively – to situations where acts of injustice harm people. It has been articulated as a new approach to justice which challenges the standard, retributive justice of the institutionalised system of courts and laws mainly on
Posts
The new European Commission has just been announced by its President-elect, Jean-Claude Junker. Yes, elected. This is the qualifier that is already common currency among commentators. Inspired by the new provisions of the Lisbon Treaty the main European political groups have organized the electoral campaign for the European Parliament around
Posts
Our information processing tools are an interconnected system: what can an investigative researcher do in order to secure data or protect sources? The TCIJ’s handbook has a few good tips. The handbook on Information Security for Journalists, by Silkie Carlo and Arjen Kamphuis, recently published by The Centre for
Posts
The Lisbon Treaty assigns to each member state a number of seats in the European Parliament based more or less on the relative size of their populations. More for the less, actually. It is well known that small countries are over represented at Strasbourg/Brussels. Each MEP from, say, Malta
Posts
To many people of liberal persuasion, the norm of our times, a ‘police state’ is one of the worst nightmares (unless it is a matter of national security, of course). What a change since the times when authors would express their admiration for the high civilization of a country saying
Posts
Happy New Year of the Horse! Given my interest for Afghanistan I thought it fitting to celebrate the new Chinese year of the horse with these portraits of Afghan steeds, painted for the Qing emperor by the milanese Jesuit missionary artist Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shinin in pinyin) in the 18th
Projects
LFApad is a FileMaker-base application designed to draft project proposals according to the logical-framework approach (LFA) on the iPad. LFApad facilitate a rigorous and coherent project development while keeping all activities, tasks and resources under control. Once inside the application you can tap around to enter content while using the
Projects
Call it, if you wish, an increasingly uncomfortable feeling of being chaperoned, short of outright eavesdropping or worse. After ten years of running a personal server it was high time to part ways with Big G for good. I decided to opt out of gmail and rely completely on my
Posts
What do we mean by saying – as in a recent European Parliament resolution – that the international strategy in Afghanistan has failed? Old dictionaries have interesting suggestions about fraud and self-deception. * * * A cultural association in Bologna asked me recently to participate to an event about Afghanistan. They would screen the documentary
Posts
Le elezioni primarie del 23 gennaio 2011 per il candidato a sindaco della coalizione di centro-sinistra hanno visto un sensibile aumento della partecipazione. Smentendo le previsioni – o auspici? – di vari commentatori, 28’313 elettori del centro-sinistra sono andati alle urne, un aumento del 14% rispetto ai 24920 elettori del 2008.
Projects
Come contributo per lo sforzo comune di organizzazione delle primarie del centrosinistra per sindaco di Bologna ho offerto a titolo gratuito, sotto i termini della licenza GPL, al Comitato per le primarie di Bologna il codice me sviluppato per la consultazione dinamica dello stradario dei seggi. Ringrazio centroinformatika.com per
Posts
In questi giorni l’opinione pubblica italiana sta avendo un sussulto di indignazione. Scrittori, giornalisti, sportivi e migliaia di cittadini esprimono solidarietà per una donna, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, condannata a morte nel suo paese, l’Iran, e si appellano alle autorità di quel paese perché sospendano la pena e rivedano