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The European Research Council (ERC) funding scheme classifies law within the social sciences and humanities sector, identifying legal science as a social science. The paper presents the case-study of such a classification as a deterministic model of evaluation and assessment of legal research. This may impact on career opportunities of individuals as well as on scientific independence, tacitly predefining the selection of research topics and legal methodology. The paper argues that ERC encourages a successful trend of conducting legal research to obtain funding, through the application of indicators. Their aim is to show which process has been followed to achieve and measure results. Legal science then risks being reduced to the analysis of legal performance. In this context, re-reading some writings of Polanyi on social sciences as well as on the critique of economic determinism sheds light on forms of academic determinism that affect the way of carrying-out research.

The unbreakable bond between language and scientific thought has incarnated into a special way of using general language, which we call language for specific purposes. It is thanks to this language that articulation of observations, conceptual and semantic constitution of scientific fields and exchange of new knowledge are possible. Language for specific purposes is not a new system of signs, rather it uses all the linguistic resources contained within general language, from which it is inseparable. Its peculiarity lies in the frequency and the specific ways of using lexicon and morphosyntactic structures, especially the ones which help it approach the ideal of precision and brevity of expression. In the first part of the paper, in addition to the detailed definition of the concept of language for specific purposes, we analyze which language is necessary for scientific purposes, whether or not scientists understand one another and if there are any universal characteristics of language for specific purposes. The second part of the paper is devoted to a smaller study with the goal of questioning some general traits of the language of archeology, performed on a group of abstracts originally written in the Serbian language.

The reflections brought about in the present paper are developed along a renewed dialogue between psychoanalysis and the human sciences, in particular with semiotics understood as the science of signification, a science, according to the definition that Saussure gave in the early twentieth century, "that studies the life of signs within the framework of social life." The specific object of our reflection is understanding whether and how the mentalization abilities of modern humans have changed along with modern digital media. If what MacIver observed about "anomie" is true, namely, that anomic man "lives on the fragile thread of immediate sensations that have no past as well as no future," the specific structure of social media seems to determine psychosocial processes characterized by the flattening of an existential perspective dimension. Social media, in fact, is marked by a linear dimension, referred to by linguists as syntagmatic, and an extreme redundancy of the other fundamental dimension of language, namely the paradigmatic one. This linguistic and, in our opinion, also deeply psychological imbalance toward a horizontal superficiality "without past and without future" actually configures, in clinical experience, a contiguous-autistic dimension. Psychotherapeutic work then aims more than ever at recovering the capacity for a processual journey, session after session, in order to rebuild a vital "psycho-semio-narrative" capacity. Remembering in order to invent, then, and a "memory of the future" such that the relationship between narrative and Origins is not so much and not only the "narrative of origins," but storytelling as a deeply mental and dreamlike tool to originate a future never before imagined.

This paper presents the results of a study focused on the analysis of student texts in three disciplines from the humanities. The aim of the study was to determine, from a systemic functional standpoint and through a transitivity analysis of process types (HALLIDAY, 1994), how different fields of knowledge and experience are construed in student texts. In the analysis, we considered 80 texts written by undergraduate students of literature, history and geography. The texts belong to four different genres: essay, question-answer, review and report and were all written in Spanish. The methodology included a quantitative and qualitative analysis of process type realizations of each text, followed by a comparative analysis between the disciplines and between the genres considered in each one. The results showed both the similarities that unite these disciplines as part of the humanities area and the differences that reflect their specific fields of knowledge and construction of meanings.

The purpose of this paper is to initiate a debate on the "state of health" of the humanities within Italy's largest research institution. Looking back over its history, in fact, it seems that the humanities are almost somehow a foreign body in the life of this institution. In the last 15 years, though, the need to harmonize them in the life of the CNR has emerged in different ways, which seem, however, to reflect the deep-rooted crisis and the profound transformations that mark the humanities today. The present contribution has an exploratory value, in the hope of resuming and enriching an increasingly urgent debate, which calls into question the civil role and the very survival of humanistic studies.

Since the founding of the architectural discipline by Alberti, there have been tensions between multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. These tensions still have an impact on research on both the spatial object and the social object. Three tensions are discussed in this paper: the one between spatial form and uses of space; the one between drawing and text; and the one between geometric and perceived representation of spaces. Kevin Lynch's approach in urban sociology shows a way of representing both spatial and human factors. Based on a new study case, social housing districts in cross-border Hainaut, we propose an adaptation of the existing nomenclatures for a better consideration of human factors.

This paper refers to two traditionally separate disciplines: Humanities and Legal Sciences. Both disciplines have been understood from a positivist point of view that has dissected them two different fields. It is not possible to focus only on legal texts to address certain problems such as democratic memory. To this end, an interdisciplinary methodology is essential, using the Humanities and History for legal practice, and considering the humanity of the victims in the interpretation of the Law. For this purpose, the contributions of History to jurisprudence will be analysed in two case studies: the last Argentine dictatorship and the Francoism in Spain.

Academic conferences are events geared to disciplinary specialization, and much of the SoTL literature regarding scholarly gatherings addresses their benefits for graduate student apprenticeship. In our organization of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, we explored other forms of pedagogy to augment an academic professionalization approach. In particular, we created opportunities for cross-disciplinary teaching and learning, which have particular potential for Humanities students who may end up applying their discipline-specific training in non-academic contexts and in unexpected ways. This paper explores the possibilities and limitations of the cross-disciplinary initiatives that we developed for Interdisciplinary / Multidisciplinary Woolf. Inspired by the interdisciplinarity of the early 20th century British author Virginia Woolf and the current critical movement known as the New Modernist Studies, we outline the theories behind our approach to conference pedagogy and reflect upon our intentions and methods. We also assess learning outcomes in relation to both apprenticeship and non-traditional models of conference-based instructional design, and consider the institutional structures and practices that both enable and limit the scope of cross-disciplinary research and its dissemination at the undergraduate, graduate, and faculty levels. By moving away from the field of literary studies and sharing our scholarly teaching perspective in the context of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, we attempt to put into motion the potentially transformative disciplinary boundary-crossings that motivated the 2012 Woolf Conference. Les colloques universitaires sont des événements axés sur la spécialisation des disciplines et une grande partie des publications en ACEA concernant les rencontres savantes traitent de leurs avantages pour l’apprentissage des étudiants de cycles supérieurs. Lors de la préparation de notre XXe Colloque international annuel sur Virginia Woolf, nous avons exploré d’autres formes de pédagogie afin d’élargir l’approche de professionnalisation académique. En particulier, nous avons créé des opportunités d’enseignement et d’apprentissage pluridisciplinaire qui présentent un potentiel particulier pour les étudiants des humanités qui vont peut-être finir par mettre en application leur formation spécifique à leur discipline à des contextes non-académiques et de manières inattendues. Cet article explore les possibilités et les limites des initiatives pluridisciplinaires que nous avons développées pour notre colloque intitulé Woolf Interdisciplinaire / Pluridisciplinaire. Inspirés par l’interdisciplinarité de l’auteure britannique du début du XXe siècle, Virginia Woolf, et par le mouvement critique actuel qu’on appelle Études du nouveau modernisme, nous présentons les théories sous-jacentes à notre approche de la pédagogie des colloques et proposons une réflexion sur nos intentions et nos méthodes. Nous évaluons également les résultats d’apprentissage par rapport à l’apprentissage lui-même et par rapport aux modèles non traditionnels de conception de l’enseignement basé sur les cours magistraux et prenons en considération les structures et les pratiques institutionnelles qui favorisent mais qui limitent également l’étendue de la recherche pluridisciplinaire et sa diffusion aux niveaux du premier cycle, des cycles supérieurs et des professeurs. En nous éloignant du domaine des études littéraires et en partageant notre perspective d’enseignement intellectuel dans le contexte de l’Avancement des connaissances en enseignement et en apprentissage, nous tentons de mettre en mouvement les possibilités de franchissement des limites disciplinaires transformateur qui ont motivé le colloque sur Virginia Woolf de 2012.