Project CIRCE

🎓 Doctoral Seminar and Transdisciplinary Roundtable, University of Genoa

At the Università di Genova, the Doctoral Programme in History, Art History and Archaeology (DIRAAS) hosts a CIRCE doctoral seminar and transdisciplinary roundtable on controversial cultural heritage.

🎙️ Speakers

Giuseppe Capriotti (University of Macerata / Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata) and Laura Stagno (University of Genoa)
Controversial Cultural Heritage: case studies from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action CIRCE

Inigo Almela Legorburu (University of Madrid / UNED - Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia)
Zawiyas: configuration and controversy

Marina Girona Berenguer (UNED, Madrid)
Conflicts and controversies among Jewish communities in Sepharad

Yassine Limam (University of Tunis / Université de Tunis)
Japanese Depictions of Westerners

💬 Transdisciplinary Roundtable with Neila Saadi and Jamel Eddine Ben Saidane (Mdinti, Tunis), Ana Bratić (HULU Split), the speakers, CIRCE members and PhD candidates. Ana Bratić takes part on behalf of HULU Split, a CIRCE partner organisation.

🗓️ Thursday, 17 September 2026, 3.30pm
📍 Room 2, Palazzo Balbi Cattaneo, via Balbi 2, Genoa

CIRCE at "Incontri dal Direttore", UNIMC / Università degli Studi di Macerata 🎓 , Università di Macerata

Our Visiting Scholar Ana Bratić takes the floor at the eighteenth meeting of "Incontri dal Direttore," the University of Macerata's series of interdisciplinary dialogues on ongoing departmental research.

👉Ana Bratić, HULU Split Professional and Exhibition Practices
Seconded to Macerata from HULU Split hulu_split (Croatian Association of Visual Artists – Split), our CIRCE partner, Ana brings the association's curatorial and exhibition practice into the departmental conversation. Exactly the kind of staff exchange CIRCE is built on! ☺️

👉She shares the session with Alessandro Serrani (research fellow), "Per una ricontestualizzazione delle opere d'arte italiane requisite in età napoleonica" (Towards a recontextualisation of Italian artworks requisitioned in the Napoleonic era).
The meeting is open to all.

🗓 Wednesday, 16 September 2026, 6 PM
📍 Studio del Direttore, second floor, Polo Bertelli, University of Macerata, Scienze della formazione, dei beni culturali e del turismo Scienze della formazione, Beni Culturali e Turismo-UNIMC

CIRCE at "Incontri dal Direttore", Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata 🎓

Our Visiting Scholar Ana Bratić takes the floor at the eighteenth meeting of "Incontri dal Direttore," the University of Macerata's series of interdisciplinary dialogues on ongoing departmental research.

👉Ana Bratić, HULU Split Professional and Exhibition Practices
Seconded to Macerata from HULU Split (Croatian Association of Visual Artists – Split), our CIRCE partner, Ana brings the association's curatorial and exhibition practice into the departmental conversation. Exactly the kind of staff exchange CIRCE is built on! ☺️

👉She shares the session with Alessandro Serrani (research fellow), "Per una ricontestualizzazione delle opere d'arte italiane requisite in età napoleonica" (Towards a recontextualisation of Italian artworks requisitioned in the Napoleonic era).

The meeting is open to all.

🗓 Wednesday, 16 September 2026, 6 PM
📍 Studio del Direttore, second floor, Polo Bertelli, University of Macerata Scienze della formazione, dei beni culturali e del turismo / Unimc

📍 Controversial heritage: a decolonial walk through the streets of Ancona

As part of the 8th Festival della Storia di Ancona Festival della Storia Ancona , CIRCE joined a decolonial walk led by Claudio Bruschi, through places where the memory of the past still shapes the city's public space.

We followed streets named after figures tied to Italy's colonial experience in Ethiopia, reflecting on what those names commemorate, and on what they leave out of the public narrative.

From there the route led into Ancona's former Jewish quarter, tracing a community that has long been part of the city's history, and ended at the Synagogue 🕍, where a significant and often overlooked memory is still visible.

A journey through places, then, but also through the histories those places tell, and the ones they leave untold.

🙏 Thank you to the Festival della Storia di Ancona and University of Macerata Scienze della formazione, Beni Culturali e Turismo-UNIMC and to everyone who walked with us.

Ancona FestivalDellaStoria

📍 Controversial heritage: a decolonial walk through the streets of Ancona

As part of the 8th Festival della Storia di Ancona, CIRCE joined a decolonial walk led by Claudio Bruschi, through places where the memory of the past still shapes the city's public space.

We followed streets named after figures tied to Italy's colonial experience in Ethiopia, reflecting on what those names commemorate, and on what they leave out of the public narrative.

From there the route led into Ancona's former Jewish quarter, tracing a community that has long been part of the city's history, and ended at the Synagogue 🕍, where a significant and often overlooked memory is still visible.

A journey through places, then, but also through the histories those places tell, and the ones they leave untold.

🙏 Thank you to the Festival della Storia Ancona, Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata, Scienze della formazione, dei beni culturali e del turismo / Unimc, and to everyone who walked with us.

🏛️ CIRCE joins the Festival della Storia Ancona
On Sunday 6 September, join us for "Il patrimonio controverso" (The Controversial Heritage), a decolonial walk led by Claudio Bruschi. Festival della Storia Ancona

Every port city keeps a version of its own history in plain sight: in its monuments, its street names, the squares people cross every day. This walk revisits those sites in Ancona and asks a harder question: what do they commemorate, what do they leave unsaid, and how does a city reckon with its colonial past? It is the question at the centre of CIRCE, our research project on controversial cultural heritage in the ports of the Mediterranean and beyond.

The walk is part of the 8th Festival della Storia (this year's theme: "Follie"), held at the Mole Vanvitelliana from 3 to 6 September, and is organised in collaboration with the Università degli Studi di Macerata, Scienze della formazione, dei beni culturali e del turismo Università di Macerata Scienze della formazione, Beni Culturali e Turismo-UNIMC

📍 Piazza Roma (L'Edicola), Ancona
🗓️ Sunday 6 September 2026, 10.30
🔗 festivalstoriancona.it

🏛️ CIRCE joins the Festival della Storia Ancona

On Sunday 6 September, join us for "Il patrimonio controverso" (The Controversial Heritage), a decolonial walk led by Claudio Bruschi.

Every port city keeps a version of its own history in plain sight: in its monuments, its street names, the squares people cross every day. This walk revisits those sites in Ancona and asks a harder question: what do they commemorate, what do they leave unsaid, and how does a city reckon with its colonial past? It is the question at the centre of CIRCE, our research project on controversial cultural heritage in the ports of the Mediterranean and beyond.

The walk is part of the 8th Festival della Storia (this year's theme: "Follie"), held at the Mole Vanvitelliana from 3 to 6 September, and is organised in collaboration with the Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata, Scienze della formazione, dei beni culturali e del turismo / Unimc

📍 Piazza Roma (L'Edicola), Ancona
🗓️ Sunday 6 September 2026, 10.30
🔗 festivalstoriancona.it

THIS IS NOT A PHOTO DUMP! — vol. II in Macerata & Marche📍 · 20–22 July 2026 · week two

During the first week, we read the Marche's uncomfortable art and architecture. On week two, we turned the lens on ourselves — the people, the research and the community behind CIRCE, here's the short recap of it...

👇👇

We began the week on Monday, 20th of July, with a focus group with African and Afro-descendant community in Macerata on Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata. A project about who gets written out of the picture has to start by listening to the people living it — so that is where the second week began.

At Incontri dal direttore (Tue 21 July), CIRCE members presented the research we carried out in Tunis during previous months, both from UNIMC and Mdinti-مدينتي, and what those archives add to the story we had been tracing across the Marche.

The next day (Wed 22 July) we were participating on networking pitch event hosted by our CIRCE partner HULU Split, online and in person at once. We closed the day raising a glass to twenty years of the Scienze della formazione, dei beni culturali e del turismo / Unimc

Two weeks, one question — who does society choose to remember, and who does it leave out? The fieldwork is done; the questions aren't.

🇪🇺 Funded by the European Union.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA).

📍 Macerata & the Marche · 11–18 July 2026 ·
What does a society choose to remember in its churches, museums and streets — and what does it quietly leave out? We had two weeks in the Marche to find out — here's the recap of the first week. 👉

It began in Urbino (Sat 11 July), before Paolo Uccello's "Miracle of the Profaned Host" — an anti-Jewish legend staged as devotion.

Back in Macerata (Mon 13 July) we mapped the city with the people who live it, then went to Petriolo, where Mariano showed us paintings by De Magistris and Durante Nobili: the Holy League's victory at Lepanto, with Ottoman captives — slaves — beneath the triumph.

We pulled the same thread to Grottammare (Tue 14 July), to the Church of Pope Saint Pius V, with Mattia Guidetti — who, later that day back in UNIMC Università di Macerata gave a talk on the captured Ottoman banners, taken in battle and still kept in some Marche churches.
In Senigallia (Wed 15 July), Mr. Remo Morpurgo, of the city's Jewish community, traced its fate across the centuries through the former ghetto and the synagogue. Then Mauro Saracco (Thu 16 July) read Macerata's fascist architecture with us, before we took to the streets for a decolonial walk — and closed the week.

Contested history isn't far away — it's on the wall of the church next door, the next door's building. 👇

To be continued…

CIRCE representatives from Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata Scienze della formazione, Beni Culturali e Turismo-UNIMC, Pwani University of Mombasa Pwani University, Mdinti Mdinti-مدينتي
HULU Split hulu_split and University of Madrid have participated in these events.

Funded by the European Union🇪🇺 MSCA

📍 Macerata & the Marche · 11–18 July 2026 ·

What does a society choose to remember in its churches, museums and streets — and what does it quietly leave out? We had two weeks in the Marche to find out — here's the recap of the first week. 👉

It began in Urbino (Sat 11 July), before Paolo Uccello's "Miracle of the Profaned Host" — an anti-Jewish legend staged as devotion.

Back in Macerata (Mon 13 July) we mapped the city with the people who live it, then went to Petriolo, where Mariano showed us paintings by De Magistris and Durante Nobili: the Holy League's victory at Lepanto, with Ottoman captives — slaves — beneath the triumph.

We pulled the same thread to Grottammare (Tue 14 July), to the Church of Pope Saint Pius V, with Mattia Guidetti — who, later that day back in Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata, gave a talk on the captured Ottoman banners, taken in battle and still kept in some Marche churches.


In Senigallia (Wed 15 July), Mr. Remo Morpurgo, of the city's Jewish community, traced its fate across the centuries through the former ghetto and the synagogue. Then Mauro Saracco (Thu 16 July) read Macerata's fascist architecture with us, before we took to the streets for a decolonial walk — and closed the week.

Contested history isn't far away — it's on the wall of the church next door, the next door's building. 👇

To be continued…

CIRCE representatives from Unimc / Università degli Studi di Macerata, Pwani University of Mombasa, Mdinti-مدينتي
HULU Split and University of Madrid have participated in these events.

Funded by the European Union🇪🇺