Venice-based research university excelling in digital humanities, cultural heritage, climate adaptation, and nanomaterials risk — a major Marie Curie fellowship host.
Ca' Foscari is a research-intensive university in Venice with deep strengths in humanities, social sciences, and environmental science. It serves as one of Italy's premier host institutions for Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowships, attracting international researchers across digital humanities, cultural heritage studies, climate adaptation, and nanomaterials risk assessment. The university bridges historical and textual scholarship with computational methods and connects environmental research to policy and decision-support tools. Its Venice location makes it a natural hub for cultural heritage preservation, climate risk research, and studies on sustainable tourism and urban resilience.
Dozens of MSCA fellowships on topics from Dante and Aristotle manuscripts to early modern philosophy (BIFLOW, SPERONI, TASTGCEP, GoldOpera), with a clear recent surge in digital humanities keywords.
Projects spanning climate modeling (CLARITY), water scarcity policy (WATER DROP), green growth strategies (GREEN-WIN), and fisheries under climate change (ClimeFish).
Participated in NANORESTART (nanomaterials for art restoration), NanoFASE (nanomaterial fate in environment), caLIBRAte (nano risk governance), and coordinated NanoERA on long-term ecological effects.
Major ERC grants on domestic labor inequalities (DomEQUAL), Chinese labour dynamics, opinion dynamics in European spaces (ODYCCEUS), and cross-national social science infrastructure (SERISS, SHARE-DEV3).
Recent keywords show growing activity in sustainable finance and sustainable development, alongside economics projects like ExSIDE on expectations and social influence dynamics.
Keywords include machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and decision support systems applied across heritage digitization, climate forecasting, and risk assessment.
In the early H2020 period (2015–2018), Ca' Foscari combined nanomaterials research and environmental risk assessment with classical humanities fellowships, showing a dual identity as both a science and humanities institution. From 2019 onward, the balance shifted decisively toward digital humanities, cultural heritage, early modern intellectual history, and sustainable finance — with Venice itself becoming a more explicit research subject. The computational side evolved from materials science modeling toward AI-driven text analysis and heritage digitization.
Ca' Foscari is consolidating around the intersection of digital technologies and cultural heritage, with growing capacity in sustainable finance — expect future projects combining AI, historical archives, and climate adaptation for cultural assets.
Ca' Foscari is overwhelmingly a project coordinator (133 of 187 projects, ~71%), but this is driven by its massive Marie Curie fellowship hosting — each MSCA-IF is technically coordinated by the host institution. When it joins larger collaborative projects (RIA, IA), it participates as a capable partner contributing specialized expertise rather than leading. With 860 unique partners across 61 countries, it operates as a high-connectivity hub that rarely repeats the same consortium, reflecting the diverse, individual-researcher-driven nature of its fellowship portfolio.
Ca' Foscari has collaborated with 860 distinct organizations across 61 countries, making it one of the most broadly connected universities in H2020. Its network spans all of Europe with notable links to partners studying China, Latin America, and global governance — reflecting its social science and area studies strengths well beyond the typical European cluster.
Ca' Foscari occupies a rare niche: a humanities-strong university with genuine environmental and materials science capacity, all anchored in Venice — a city that is itself a living laboratory for cultural preservation under climate threat. For consortium builders, this means access to researchers who can bridge historical analysis with computational tools and environmental science in ways few institutions can. Its track record of hosting 80+ Marie Curie fellows also signals strong institutional support for incoming researchers and administrative readiness for EU project management.
