Alberto Gasparini (born January 13, 1940, in Modena, Italy) is an Italian sociologist and professor of urban and rural sociology, of sociology of international relations and of techniques of forecasting. His research and theoretical studies concern the city and the housing, the symbolism of spaces, the cross-border co-operation, the civil societies and the international relations, the futures studies. He is founder and president of the International University Institute of the European Studies (IUIES), co-founder and secretary general of International Futures Research Academy (IFRA). Besides he is founder and director of the following journal: FUTURIBILI (New Edition), ISIG Journal, IUIES Journal.
Biography and career
The prologue of the academic training of Alberto Gasparini was a research and the subsequent book on the history of international relations, in this case the dispute between the Church and the Dukes of Ferrara between October 1597 and January 1598.
Alberto Gasparini graduated in Sociology from University of Trento (Italy) in 1969. He started working as junior and then senior researcher at the International Sociology Institute of Gorizia (ISIG) from 1970. He was lecturer and then associate professor in sociology of organizations at the University of Bologna from 1977 to 1987. In the 1983 was visiting scholar at University of Washington of Seattle. In the 1987 he became full professor of urban and rural sociology at the University of Trieste. In this University he taught also sociology of international relations and techniques of forecasting.
In 1989 he was appointed director of ISIG, and then director of the Department of Human Sciences at the University of Trieste. In 1992 he started up a research doctorate (PhD) in Sociology of territorial and international phenomena, of which was coordinator. Alberto Gasparini, as director of ISIG, worked intensively on relations with scholar from, and on the problems of, the countries which emerged from the collapse of the communist system after 1989. In this regard I intensified relations with the Universities of Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade, but above all have developed links with institutional counterparts in the Soviet Union (as was) and subsequently Russia and the Ukraine.
Relations were thereby established with Soviet Institute of Sociology and Academy of Science, the Universities of Moscow, Leningrad (subsequently St. Petersburg), Kharkiv and Tyumen. The fruit of these relations included books (such as Social actors and designing the civil society of Eastern Europe) and articles (for Futuribili and Russian journals), conferences and seminars. They also produced a macro-research project on relations among ethnic groups in Europe, including three (Italians, Friulani and Slovenes) in Friuli Venezia Giulia, three (Serbs, Hungarians and Slovaks) in the Yugoslav region of Vojvodina, four (Ukrainians, Russians, Jews and Belarusians) in the Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast, and four (Russians, Ukrainians, Caucasians and Tatars) in the Siberian Tyumen Oblast. In 1992 an international conference in Gorizia was attended by many scholars and teachers from universities in eastern Europe, notably Eotvos Lorand University and the University of Economic Sciences in Budapest, the Universities of Warsaw and Kraków and Charles University in Prague. This was the year after the foundation of Isig Journal, which publishes articles in Italian and English on international relations, with particular reference to former communist countries and their transition processes.
International relations is also the theme of an annual workshop The first was organised in 1992 on the Problems of the New Europe, held in an international Summer School.
Held entirely in English, the Summer School has been a focal point for graduates, teachers and experts from all over the world. Every year it deals with fresh social, political and academic themes including Mediterranean relations, cross-border cooperation, the transition of former communist societies, innovation and creativeness, and the construction of international towns and cities.