Social sciences and humanities, cultural heritage

Research in the Cnr Department of Social Science and Humanities, cultural heritage embraces social sciences as a whole as well as material and immaterial cultural heritage. The activity is focused on four disciplinary macro-areas: cultural studies, law, social sciences, linguistics and cognitive research, that are very different from each other but unified by the common goal of contributing to knowledge, preservation, use of cultural identity and cultural heritage.

Among the main themes: information and communication technology, research evaluation and indicators, e-publishing, smart cities, innovation, creativity for knowledge society economics SME, democracy and laws, analysis of European, national, regional and communal institutions, migrations and transmission of culture, Multilanguage, teaching technologies, communications security, social cohesion and competitiveness patterns, cognitive science, computational linguistics, history of language and lexicography, history of philosophy and science, history of ancient and modern Mediterranean, cultural heritage preservation, archiving, cataloguing and representation, cultural heritage diagnostic, conservation, and restoration, archaeology; archaeometry; cultural heritage valorization.

Download the Department brochure - Department video (italian version). 

WeMed - 2024 Edition. Society, Economy and Environment in the Mediterranean

Institutional Area

WeMed is an interactive platform that provides key socio-economic and environmental indicators for the Mediterranean region. Developed as part of the collaboration between the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and the Cnr Institute for studies on the Mediterranean (CNR-ISMed), it offers an innovative tool to analyse and understand the dynamics of the region

Cnr-Ispc for Heritage Science

Video 2024

A video presentation of the Institute of Heritage Science of the National Research Council of Italy: its mission is pursueing scientific excellence and foster innovation in understanding, conservation and enhancement of tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage

Underground Built Heritage Valorisation: A Handbook

Institutional area

Edited by Cnr Edizioni, this handbook covers all lectures and research activities developed and presented in the context of the first "Underground4value Training School". The School, a main focal point of the COST Action CA18110 “Underground Built Heritage as catalyser for Community Valorisation” was held in Naples, at the majestic Castel dell’Ovo overlooking the sea. It was a challenging experience that attracted 30 graduate trainees from 12 countries across Europe and Turkey

Liber - Linear B Electronic Resources

Institutional area

The Linear B Electronic Resources (LiBER) project, launched by the National Research Council of Italy, has been conceived and developed by Maurizio Del Freo (Cnr-Ispc) and Francesco Di Filippo (Cnr-ISMed). The final goal of the project is to create a complete digital edition of the Linear B documents and to make it available to all scholars interested in the Mycenaean civilisation together with a new search engine for the processing of logosyllabic scripts and Web-GIS functions for the topographical representation of the documents.Current ly, the database contains all the Linear B documents from Knossos, Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea

The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche

Institutional Area

The Visual Computing Lab of Cnr-Isti developed an interactive web system to explore the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, frescoed by Raffaello Sanzio, and other paintings of  Villa Farnesina (Rome). The system allows to immerse in the paintings, examining and discovering -both from an historical, artistic and scientific point of view- the 170 species of the vegetal festoons, and the 50 animal species represented in the vault 

Elexis, towards a European lexicographic infrastructure 

Institutional area

The Institute for computational linguistics “A. Zampolli” (Cnr-Ilc) is among the partners of Elexis, the european project funded under the programme Horizon 2020 aimed at building a European lexicographic infrastructure. The project aims to harmonize the enormous amount of dictionaries and dictionary data published by European institutions, publishers, universities and communities, and to develop tools which can be used by everyone  

Journal of Cultural Heritage

Institutional area

The Journal of Cultural Heritage (JCH) is a multidisciplinary journal of science and technology for studying problems concerning conservation and awareness of cultural heritage in a wide framework

Cnr-Ismed library repository

Institutional Area

The library catalogie of the Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean of the National research coincil of Italy, is available, with many bibliographic digital resources 

The archaeology of sound of the cultic theatre in a Greek City in Sicily

Institutional Area

The research project STESICHOROS, held by Angela Bellia at Cnr-Ibam, aims to assess and recover the lost intangible heritage of cultic theatre acoustics through the acoustic reconstruction of spaces of the past, establishing establish a new line of research at the crossroads of archaeomusicology, architecture, acoustics, and digital technologies

The virtual museum of Iraq

Institutional area

This virtual museum opens a window on the superbe treasures of antique Mesopotamia, showing in particular the recovered antiquities of Baghdad National Museum. The museum is a result of a scientific-cultural project promoted by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and realised by the National Research Council of Italy