8 July, 2015 – While the Immigration Statistical Dossier 2015 reveals growing numbers of Italian citizens living abroad, there are those who decided to return to Italy. There aren’t only talents on the run, but also excellent returnees. The good news – this time – comes from Venice, with Ca ‘Foscari University “importing” brains with European fellowships. The latest result regards Antonio Montefusco, 36, philologist and medieval scholar who worked for years between Paris and Dusseldorf, and is now at the Venetian University, who offered him a teaching post as associate professor in Medieval and Humanistic Philology. The access point for a position at the university was a Starting Grant from the European Research Council, a prestigious European research grant won by Montefusco with a project on multilingualism in Dante’s Italy. In 2014, the European Research Council assessed 3,273 projects and Montefusco’s was among the 375 that were funded. Among these, only 36 Italian, most of them abroad. The recruitment of high profile scholars of international experience is one of the goals of the teaching staff recruitment plan put in place by Ca ‘Foscari, explains the Dean Michele Bugliesi: “Intercepting excellence and increase mobility of young people from other universities, Italian or foreign, is one of our main objectives. Indeed, we reserved a large share of resources to the strategic development of specific subject areas and have included the creation of calls for scholars with international experience or for scholars who receive funding under specific high qualification research programs. This is our strategy to make our university competitive, a strategy that the Ministry also promotes with incentives in the OFondo di finanziamento ordinario.” (Red)
