Second edition of the Research Prize named after Prof. Franco Ferrarotti, master of Italian sociology
FRANCO FERRAROTTI RESEARCH PRIZE
for original research in the disciplines of sociology,
economics and political science
EURISPES Foundation
Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies
Second edition of the Research Prize named after the master of Italian sociology
Franco Ferrarotti was one of the founders of contemporary Italian sociological thought.
The first holder of a university chair in Sociology in Italy, he combined scientific rigour with civic commitment, leaving a profound and generous intellectual legacy.
His critical and passionate voice shaped generations of scholars and continues to inspire public debate, well beyond the confines of academia.
The Eurispes Foundation – Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies, in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Communication and Social Research, wishes to honour his human and professional legacy, holding it up as an example
to young Italian researchers and scholars.
Franco Ferrarotti was Chair of the Eurispes Scientific Committee and contributed to its standing in the field of social research in Italy and abroad.
The Prize is awarded to an individual and will go to an original research project addressing themes characteristic of Professor Ferrarotti’s scientific and cultural work, following his distinctive methodological approach, briefly outlined in the Annex.
The winner will receive a cash prize of €5,000 (five thousand euros), gross of statutory withholdings and all-inclusive, to be used for carrying out the project, under the terms set out in the attached Terms of Participation.
The Selection Committee is composed of:
Gian Maria Fara, President, Eurispes Foundation
Laura Ferrarotti, Sapienza University of Rome
Susy Montante, Director, Eurispes Foundation
Alberto Mattiacci, Chair of the Scientific Committee, Eurispes, Sapienza University of Rome
Giovanna Gianturco, Sapienza University of Rome
Marco Ricceri, Secretary General, Eurispes Foundation
The winner will be notified of the award of the Prize by March 2027.
Terms of participation
The Prize is open to young researchers aged no more than 45 at the time the project is submitted, with the following profiles: PhD holders, current PhD candidates (with or without a scholarship), and holders of research fellowships or grants at university departments, public and private research centres, and Italian and foreign think tanks.
Tenured adjunct professors, associate professors and full professors are not eligible.
Candidates who have won previous editions of the Ferrarotti Prize are likewise not eligible.
The application consists of the following documents (in digital format only):
- Master’s degree certificate from a programme in the scientific disciplines of Politics, Economics or Sociology;
- Research project in Italian and English;
- Abstract of the research project in Italian and English;
- Letter of recommendation from a supervisor/coordinator;
- Statement of consent to the possible publication of the Research Report by Eurispes;
- Curriculum vitae et studiorum.
Applications must be submitted in digital format only, to the following address:
no later than 25 February 2027. The email confirming receipt of the application shall serve as proof of participation.
The Committee shall independently decide on its internal procedures for deliberating on the award of the Prize. The Committee’s decision is final and not open to appeal or review.
The winner of the Prize will receive the relevant formal instructions together with notification of the award, on the understanding that the research must be completed and the related Report delivered to the Eurispes Foundation no later than the deadline communicated at the time of notification.
Annex
Franco Ferrarotti
Franco Ferrarotti (1926-2024), universally recognised as the founding father of Italian sociology, was an emblematic figure and a multifaceted, engagé European intellectual. Professor Emeritus and holder of the first chair of Sociology in Italy, established in 1961, he exerted a profound influence on subsequent generations of scholars and made a decisive contribution to the international legitimacy of Italian sociology.
His prolific career spanned many roles: translator, editorial contributor for Einaudi, industrial consultant to Adriano Olivetti – a formative experience that fuelled his rejection of power and his attention to human values –, diplomat as head of the Facteurs sociaux section at the OEEC (now the OECD) in Paris, and member of the Chamber of Deputies in the Third Legislature of the Republic (1959-1963), during which he promoted bills on labour, education and research.
Ferrarotti was also a visiting professor at prestigious universities around the world, including Chicago, Boston, New York, Toronto, Moscow, Warsaw and Tokyo. In 1951 he founded, together with Nicola Abbagnano, the Quaderni di Sociologia, and in 1967 he launched the journal La Critica Sociologica. In 1978 he was appointed Directeur d’études at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris.
Over the years he received numerous prizes and honours, including the lifetime achievement award of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (2001) and his appointment as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2005) by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Ferrarotti was the leading proponent of critical sociology in Italy. His work rejects the abstraction of theories lacking empirical grounding and the excessive rigidity of quantitative methods, favouring instead a sociology close to the lived experience of individuals. He conceived of the discipline as the ‘science of social interconnection’ and as a means for ‘society to listen to itself’. His methodological approach was based on the principle of ‘non-historicist historicity’, which he considered essential for understanding the complexity of an increasingly synchronic and interdependent social reality.
A cornerstone of Ferrarotti’s thought is the theoretical and epistemological development of the qualitative approach, particularly through the biographical method and life histories. Ferrarotti regarded these as indispensable tools for understanding society from the point of view of its protagonists. Moreover, for him research was ‘co-research’: a human encounter and an exchange between equals, interviewer and interviewee, aimed at avoiding the ‘objectification’ of people. Through life histories, he sought to identify the ‘structural invariants’ present in the idiographic, with the aim of ‘empowering’ the individuals involved.
Among his fundamental methodological references is the ‘ideal trilogy’, made up of Storia e storie di vita (1981b), La storia e il quotidiano (1986) and Il ricordo e la temporalità (1987), to which La sociologia alla riscoperta della qualità (1989) should be added.
Ferrarotti analysed the transformations of the contemporary age with great clarity. His reflections focused on the dominance of technology and technological innovation, which he described as a guiding principle that ‘leads nowhere’. He criticised the idea that the machine, having no past, could design the future.
He also expressed concern about the advent of the ‘ensnared society’ (networked society) and the growing cognitive gap between specialists and ordinary citizens, with the risk that a hidden and unaccountable minority might end up dominating the masses.
Another central theme was the erosion of the social bond, brought about by a market economy so powerful as to transform society into a ‘market society’ or a ‘Hobbesian conglomerate’ of purely utilitarian and calculable relationships.
In his studies he dealt extensively with issues such as work, industrialisation, politics – whose purely formal conception he criticised, calling instead for equality and social justice as a pragmatic utopia – and urban marginality. On the latter, he focused in particular on Rome as a case study, analysing its outskirts, shanty towns and migration, in connection with wider migratory phenomena.
Ferrarotti also developed a profound reflection on the sacred and on religious phenomena, identifying the disappearance of the sacred as the cause of the ‘ethical disorientation’ and existential unease of modern man, who seems to have lost the sense of his own path.
His many publications include studies on music and society, art, Europe, the first centre-left governments in Italy, Futurism and the effects of new technologies on people’s lives. His autobiographical works also occupy a prominent place, in which Ferrarotti recalls the difficult years of his childhood and youth in Piedmont, marked by Fascism and war, as well as his first experiences abroad, in Europe and then in the United States immediately after the Second World War. These writings also recount his encounters with exceptional figures, including Adriano Olivetti, Cesare Pavese, Felice Balbo and Nicola Abbagnano: texts in which individual experience is constantly interwoven with the broader social reality of the country (Tornando a Casa. Conversazioni con Franco Ferrarotti 1990-2002 (edited by C. Tognonato), 2003; Le Briciole di Epulone, 2005; Diplomatico per caso, 2006; Nelle fumose stanze, 2007)
Ferrarotti’s legacy remains remarkably relevant and continues to inspire research. The central areas of his thought – from critical sociology to the biographical method and action research, from industrial and labour sociology to reflection on the relationship between politics and society, through to the themes of inequality, urban peripheries and migration – remain key issues in contemporary debate.
