The Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures is founded on multidisciplinary and multilingual principles, approaches and traditions, and promotes critical awareness, knowledge, and the acquisition of specific skills to address the complexities of the contemporary world through an international outlook and emphasis on current and innovative perspectives regarding linguistic, literary, cultural, symbolic, and creative outputs and heritage. The Department operates within the three core missions of the University — teaching, research, and third mission — responding to the challenges of today's multicultural societies.
Within the Department — recognized as one of the 140 Departments of Excellence by the Ministry of Universities and Research (2018–2022) — research has taken on an increasingly cross-disciplinary nature, embracing innovative and challenging interdisciplinary and multicultural paths in both teaching and research, thus fostering collaborative and innovative learning and interpretative methods.
The members of the Department — who share a common vision centred on the importance of foreign languages, literatures, and cultures — have strengthened a teaching and research approach that emphasizes and values linguistic diversity and sustainability. This has solidified the Department's role as a key reference for the academic community at local, national, and international levels.
The Department’s vision is to nurture creativity and dialogue across disciplines, languages, and literatures to address the challenges of a multilingual and multicultural society, by also taking into account the core values of equity and respect for the Planet, in line with the University’s priorities for development.
Cultural and Creative Heritage
The Department fosters dialogue among cultures, languages, identities, genders, forms of knowledge, and skills through a transdisciplinary approach aimed to generate creative industries, promote a culture of innovation through technology and knowledge transfer, and develop constantly updated theoretical and educational tools and models.
To this end, the Department implements advanced training programs and research projects focused on the management of environmental, landscape, and cultural assets, also geared toward their preservation, enhancement, and management, particularly within the framework of digital humanities.
Training and New Professional Skills
The Department is a strategic partner in projects within the integrated educational pathway related to translation, interpretation, interpreting, and digital humanities. It promotes research and experimentation aimed at educational innovation in fields where the transformation of practices and operational skills is occurring rapidly, thereby providing training that is increasingly transdisciplinary.
Sustainable Economies and Societies
The Department promotes the sustainability of work models based on job quality, equal opportunities, and generational turnover. It fosters ongoing reflection on issues related to human rights and international cooperation, as well as geo-mapping and participatory territorial development, by supporting projects that enhance the value of culture, humanities education, and social sciences.
It develops and strengthens disciplinary areas addressing environmental studies from theoretical, cultural, and historical perspectives, alongside projects that promote a culture of sustainability in linguistic, cultural, and environmental terms. The Department also fosters innovative interdisciplinary connections aimed at analyzing the implications of sustainability and the digital and "green" transitions within socio-cultural domains (e.g., eco-criticism, environmental studies, participatory territorial development, archive policies, sustainable tourism).
The Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures fosters creativity and dialogue among knowledge areas in both teaching and research. It provides the knowledge and skills needed to tackle the complexities of the present and contribute to a sustainable and multicultural society. The Department has an international and multidisciplinary outlook, promoting awareness and critical thinking through a three-tier educational pathway: a three-year Bachelor's degree in four different curricula (including one in Oriental Languages and Cultures), five Master's degree programs (three of which are international), and two PhD programs.
The Department offers a Bachelor's degree in Lingue e letterature straniere moderne (Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures), where students can study five European languages (French, English, Russian, Spanish, and German) and three Oriental languages (Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese). Students can choose from one of four curricula: “Linguistico-letterario” (with a focus on linguistic and literary disciplines), “Lingue e culture orientali” (focus on oriental languages and cultures), “Turismo culturale” (focus of tourism and culture) e “Processi interculturali" (focus on intercultural processes). The Bachelor's program also offers opportunities to take courses in foreign languages, participate in international exchanges with over a hundred partner universities worldwide, and obtain a double degree with the Université de Franche-Comté in Besançon.
Additionally, the Department offers five Master's degree programs, which align with the pathways of the Bachelor's degree. Two Master's programs reflect specializations that are the flagship of the Department: Lingue moderne per la comunicazione e la cooperazione internazionale (Modern Languages for Communication and International Cooperation), focusing on foreign languages and specialized business and institutional discourse; and the internationalized Master's program in Intercultural Studies in Languages and Literatures, which deepens the study of literatures, cultures, philologies, and cultural and literary criticism. Alongside these two programs, the Department offers three more Master's degrees, two of which are also internationalized. These include Planning and Management of Tourism Systems, which focuses on tourism systems and their planning and management, and Text Sciences and Cultural Enhancement in the Digital Age, which specializes in the culture and practices of digital technologies and digital humanities. Finally, the Master's include an interdepartmental program in Geourbanistica (Geo-Urbanism), which combines geography and urban studies as a basis for territorial analysis, urban planning, and the application of mapping technologies.
All of our Master's programs offer the possibility of a Double Degree in collaboration with foreign universities (Bochum University, Germany; Farleigh Dickinson University, USA; Université Lumière Lyon 2, France).
Our students also benefit from many complementary activities such as BIP, innovative and international teaching programs, as well as Summer, Winter, and Spring schools, International schools, workshops, internships, and excursions. We nurture new and experimental teaching methods, thus stimulating curiosity, openness to the world, and interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue among our students.
The Department also offers two PhD programs: Studi Umanistici Transculturali (Transcultural Humanities) and Landscape Studies for Global and Local Challenges. It also participates in the PhD program in Studi Filologici e Linguistici sul Patrimonio Scritto e Orale (Philological and Linguistic Studies on Written and Oral Heritage) to ensure an effective pathway across all three levels of higher education. The PhD programs involve international collaborations, including co-supervision paths with foreign universities. The exchange opportunities for faculty and doctoral students have been strengthened in recent years through participation in the PhD Network "Literature and Cultural Studies," connected with the universities of Giessen, Graz, Stockholm, Helsinki, Lisbon, and Warwick.