The Centre for international Gramscian studies “GramsciLab” was founded in 2014 (thanks to the financial help of the Banco di Sardegna Foundation) at the Department of Social Sciences and Institutions at the University of Cagliari, in collaboration with the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics of the same University. It became an Interdepartmental Centre in November 2017.
The GramsciLab aims at becoming a centre of excellence as well as a place of encounter for the dissemination of analyses and elaborations around the figure and thought of Antonio Gramsci, through a multi-disciplinary approach that takes on board the results of the international Gramscian studies. The GramsciLab also responds to the need to underline the centrality of the city of Cagliari in the Mediterranean, in line with the recent internationalisation policy of the University of Cagliari.
The centre was created with the specific objective of intercepting the great variety and wealth of international Gramscian studies. In recent decades, we have witnessed the development of strong, innovative and diversified currents of Gramscian studies in Asia (in particular the Near East and the Indian sub-continent), in Africa and Latin America, sometimes in the form of fully-fledged schools of thought, which use the analytical categories elaborated by the Sardinian thinker in order to interpret the great economic, political and social transformations that have affected each country and, at the same time, the relations between them. This led to an epochal change in the international debate (Post-colonial Studies and Cultural Studies; Neo-Gramscianism in International Relations).
The richness of Gramscian studies in the world, which is still evolving, in light and in terms of new political subjects, themes and analytical perspectives that are increasingly useful for understanding global socio-political phenomena, is a strong stimulus for a centre which aims at becoming a real laboratory of thought.
The GramsciLab intends to collect, catalogue, disseminate, and translate the different traditions of international Gramscian studies as well as the enormous scientific production to date through two paths. On the one hand, the GramsciLab is at the centre of a network that, starting from the university, disseminates in its own social context the fruits of a valuable exchange of study and research perspectives and, not least, stimulates and enriches the Sardinian and Italian cultural debate on more current social, economic, political and juridical problems at a time of serious crisis, which is not only economic but more broadly cultural. To this end, the centre aims to provide specific training courses and new possibilities for further study, involving schools and other learning institutions in Sardinia, Italy and the world.
On the other hand, the centre aims to provide its own original contribution to the scientific debate by engaging in the construction and coordination of an international network that conveys the current trends of thought of the international Gramscian studies in a common process that can reinvigorate the debate.
The Centre works in synergy with the Gramscian associations and institutes in Sardinia, with national scientific institutions and abroad (such as the International Gramsci Societies in Italy and in the rest of the world; the Fondazione Gramsci in Rome and others) and is a member of the Inter-university Research Centre for Gramscian studies (University of Bari), together with the Universities of Bari, Trieste, Cosenza and Urbino.