The Department of Humanities promotes research and training in liberal arts and social science disciplines such as, Humanities, History and Cultural Heritage, creating among them a connection based on these shared programmatic principles: the importance of documents and sources (written, visual, iconographic, monumental, material, landscape, oral, and media sources); the importance of historical and diachronic research, of philology and interdisciplinarity, as a methodological research and teaching approach to understand complex intellectual and cultural phenomena; the sensitivity towards an articulated reading of modernity and contemporaneity as well as towards the different forms of political, social and territorial organisation, through an innovative study of history and the past, as a way to amplify the perception and understanding of the present; the constant reference to the evolution and the multifaceted meaning of linguistic and literary tradition, to the huge literary, archaeological and artistic heritage, to territorial assets, and the deep cultural roots of our societies.
The Department achieves a coherent and harmonic synthesis of specialised knowledge and it is committed to translating the results of research into appropriate didactic forms, in the belief that the relationship between research and training is inseparable. In this perspective, the mission of the Department - which emphasises the importance of training future scholars, researchers, teachers and cultural experts in the various humanities disciplines - is to provide analytical, critical, communicative and educational skills through the development of specific basic and applied expertise, to encourage active participation in training processes, to develop creative and experimental abilities, with the aim of training highly specialised and informed citizens and to promote a culture of responsibility and social solidarity.
The Department responds to an intense cultural demand coming from civil society, territory and professions and it actively collaborates in the life and consolidation of the University activities, with particular reference to the improvement of quality in research, the rationalisation and innovation of teaching, the strategic strengthening of its international projection, in a European and non-European dimension, through the exchange of professors and students with foreign research and training institutions and by participating in international research projects.