COLLAGE - Continuous, Decentralized Compositionality for Sustainable Artificial Intelligence Continuous, Decentralized Compositionality for Sustainable Artificial Intelligence 

Scientific Director: Vincenzo Lomonaco

Thanks to recent advances in machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has achieved extraordinary results. However, current solutions demand vast amounts of computing power and memory, posing challenges in terms of efficiency and sustainability. The COLLAGE project—Continual, Decentralized Compositionality for Sustainable Artificial Intelligence—aims to drastically reduce these costs by developing AI methodologies based on reusability, with a continuous, decentralized, and compositional system for sustainable AI solutions. The project aims to create a scientific foundation for models that can adapt over time, protocols for sharing knowledge between applications, and methods for building new AI from existing ones. COLLAGE proposes a paradigm shift: from an application-centric approach to a structural and sustainable one by design. The results, validated through a proof of concept on a decentralized “AI for flood forecasting” system in Europe, aim to define a circular economy for the development and use of AI. 

MAEDINA - Media, Audiences, and Emotions in Driving Immigration News Avoidance 

Scientific Lead: Donatella Selva

The MAEDINA project—Media, Audiences and Emotions in Driving Immigration News Avoidance—explores the phenomenon of news avoidance, specifically focusing on news related to immigration. The term “news avoidance” refers to practices of resistance or rejection toward information, sources, or news outlets, in relation to news consumption habits, digital disconnection, and forms of critical citizenship. The project aims to advance field research by introducing a new qualitative approach that integrates the analysis of public practices and their meanings, media representations, and, for the first time, the perceptions and strategies of journalists. Particular attention is given to the role of emotions in the processes of producing, disseminating, consuming, and rejecting news about immigration. Specifically, MAEDINA aims to: 1) develop a White Paper on Immigration News through a collaborative process involving citizens and journalists, with the goal of providing guidelines for more responsible communication; 2) proceed with an open-source browser extension to collect and monitor data on news consumption and avoidance behaviors. With Italy serving as a pilot case, the project lays the groundwork for a methodological framework applicable to comparative and international contexts.

POLISMOD - A political sociology of religious moderation in 21st-century Europe

Scientific Director: Kristina Stoeckl

The POLISMOD project, A political sociology of religious moderation in 21st-century Europe, explores how religious figures navigate Europe's increasingly polarized “culture wars.” While European Christian churches supported democracy, human rights, and European integration throughout the second half of the 20th century, this legacy is now being challenged as far-right movements and reactionary Christian networks mobilize religious identity against democratic pluralism, gender equality, LGBTIQ+ rights, and immigration. Positioned between conservative religious activism and secular progressivism, religious moderates affirm the role of religion in public life, resisting its exploitation as an anti-democratic force. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines ethnographic fieldwork, discourse analysis, and survey data, POLISMOD examines democratic religious actors in four national and denominational contexts—Catholic Italy and Germany, Protestant Germany and Finland (with its Orthodox minority), and Orthodox Romania. The project maps how they articulate their identities and values, and how they position themselves on key social and political issues.