Paper short abstract:

The introduction of the University Reform has had a snowball effect on the Department of Anthropology. By listening to the voices of teachers and students of Anthropology, I try to analyze as the way of intending university space and Anthropology have changed after the introduction of Reform.

Paper long abstract:

My paper focuses on the changes produced by the introduction of the University Reform in the Anthropology Department at the University of Rome "La Sapienza."

The introduction of the new educational system, with its Learning Agreements, its Program Descriptions (which set out the professional qualifications and employment outcomes which each program aims to provide), its ministerial charts, has resulted in various transformations:

- Teaching and research have been tightly bound to the ministerial grids, and to the logic of credits. The scientific pursuit of knowledge has been squeezed between academic/bureaucratic and economic levels;

- Teachers have been forced to confront new challenges: organization of degree programs and duties of management and monitoring;

- The new courses have permitted the students to feel much earlier on that they belong to a scholarly community, to see themselves as participants in a common endeavor, to critically engage with theoretical and research-related developments in their field, and also to ask questions about future employment.

The reform has broken the old academic organizational scheme and has opened this space to new subjects and new interests: teachers, students, companies, NGOs, social cooperatives, and government agencies.

By closely observing the practices of teachers and students, by listening to and analyzing the narratives they produce, which make sense of the university experience and render it objective, I attempt to grasp how the University Reform has been negotiated with local traditions and how the idea of Anthrolopogy has changed in accordance with its configurations, both academic and non-academic.

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