Fausto Colombo (b. 1955)
EDUCATION: I graduated in philosophy in 1978 at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, and I earned in 1982 a postgraduate degree in Communication Sciences (PHD equivalent) at Scuola Superiore delle Comunicazioni Sociali of the same University.
ACADEMIC CAREER AND DIDACTIC RESPONSIBILITIES: From 1987 to 1998 I had been a researcher at Education Sciences faculty at Università Cattolica, where I became then associate professor from 1998 (firstly in Literature and Philosophy faculty and then in Political Sciences faculty) and full professor from 2003 in the Political Sciences faculty (now Political and Social Sciences faculty). Nowadays I am a regular professor of the course in Media communication theory and Politics and Media, and coordinator of the bachelor degree’s course in Communication and society and director of the Master in Communication, Digital Marketing and Interactive Advertising from 2011.
I had been coordinator of the PhD in Culture and Communication at Università Cattolica from 2000 to 2003 and at the moment I am part of the professors’ college of the PhD school in Sociology culture and organisations of the same University. During my career I supervised 9 PhD thesis (one of them in the making).
I am director of the Communication and Performing Arts department since 2013 and Rector’s delegate for Institutional Branding, Communication and Promotion since 2017.
From 2013 to 2016 I had been representative professor of the Genres and Formats course at Italian Switzerland University, Lugano (CH). I had been Visiting professor in 2014 at Celsa, Université Sorbonne (Paris) and in 2018 in Lyon at Université Lumière Paris 2. Moreover I had been a title holder of the Unesco Chair in International Communication at Université Stendhal in Grenoble in 2015. I had been the Italian representative in Cost Action Action IS0906 “Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies", in COST Action 20 about the “Impact of the Internet on traditional media”, of which I coordinated the working group “Television and film”, and in COST Action 30 with the title “East of West : Setting a New Central and Eastern European Media Research Agenda”.
RESEARCH: I created OssCom – Media and communication research centre of the Università Cattolica in Milan, which I had been managing for 18 years, from 1994 to 2012.
I had been and I am responsible of different successful research projects with competition announcements. In particular:
a. I had been responsible of the following research projects of international interests (PRIN) financed by the Italian University and Scientific Research Ministry:
- 1997 scientific Responsible of the "Marginal cultures and industrial culture in Italy" research unit in PRIN "Cultural industries between production and consumption" – Scientific coordinator professor Laura Bovone - 1999 Scientific responsible of the “Social speeches, media subjects and technological knowledge building” research unit in PRIN "Cultural production in Italy: subjects, professions, systems" – Scientific coordinator professor Laura Bovone. - 2003 Scientific responsible of the “Reception and media consumption representation systems research through qualitative” unit in PRIN "Systems and prevision methods of juvenile trends and vocational consumption" - Scientific coordinator professor Bernardo Valli - 2006 Scientific coordinator of "Media and Generations in Italian society" research - 2009 Scientific responsible of the “Cultural productions and social relations research identity-making through digital content production and exchange” unit: in PRIN "Social relations and online identity: Italian experiences and tales on websites and social networks" - Scientific coordinator professor Giovanni Boccia (Artieri)
b) I coordinated in 2014 a research project named “I don’t want to retire”: life lengthening, generational challenges and an opportunity for society”, financed by my athenaeum through a competitive internal announcement.
c) I took part in 2017 with Harvest project (eHealth and Ageing in Rural Areas: transforming Everyday Life, Digital Competences, and Technology, together with Finnish and Swedish researchers, as coordinators) at the third call of the European plan Ageing and Place in a Digitising World. The project was financed by JPI European Programs and it will officially start in April 2018.
EDITORIAL AND SCIENTIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES: I am responsible (together with Guido Gili) of the sociologic section for La Scuola publishing house. I am member of the "Social communications. Media, Show and Cultural studies magazine", "Communication and language" and "CM. Communication Management" and "Nordicom" editorial committee. I had been Routledge collection editor in Studies in European Communication Research and Education from 2012 to 2016. I am member of the CELSA Scientific Counsel (Université Paris IV, Sorbonne). I regularly work as a referee function for different national and international magazines and I evaluated editorial projects for Routledge editor.
ASSOCIATIVE RESPONSIBILITIES: I had been member of the Italian Sociology Association (AIS) from 2003 to 2006 and coordinator of the Processes Section and Cultural Organisation of the Italian Sociology Association (AIS) from 2011 to 2014. I had been member of ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association) Executive Board from 2012 to 2016.
EVALUATION ACTIVITIES: I had been degree courses evaluator in the CRUI project (Rectors conference of the Italian Universities). Moreover, I evaluated different types of research projects: - Italian projects of national interest (PRIN and FIRB) for MIUR, Italian University and Research Ministry. - Respectively Dutch and Belgian national projects for the Domain Board Social Sciences and Humanities of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and for The F.R.S-FNRS and FWO. - I took part in 2015-2016 in the central evaluation group for the evaluation process of sociologic products begun by the Italian national agency for research ANVUR (GEV area 14)
AWARDS AND HONOURS: I was nominated member of the European Academy in Film, Media and Visual studies section in 2016 and I became part of the directive committee of the same section in 2017. I won a Università Cattolica prize in 2017 for the quality publication of the article Ageing, Media and Communication, published in J.F. Nussbaum (ed.) Communication Across the Lifespan: ICA theme book, Peter Lang, Berlin 2016.
MY SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY THEMES: I deal the bound between digitalisation and social transformation since the beginning of my scientific career. I studied bounds between the born of informatics archives and social memory in my first volume The imperfect archives (Milano, Vita e Pensiero 1986). I edited in 1994, with Gianfranco Bettetini, the volume The new communication technologies (Milano, Bompiani; translated in Spanish by the editor Catedra in 1997) about the complex phenomena of digitalisation and Media digitalisation (edited by, Roma, Carocci 2007). In the last phase, I entered the web critical analysis branch both with my first volume The social power. Social media history and criticism (Milano: Bruno Mondadori 2013), and with a long series of essays in English and French about phenomena such as trolling, data control and privacy challenges. I for example recall: Too Easy to Say Blog: Paradoxes of Authenticity on the Web, in L. Kramp and others (eds.), Media Practice and Everyday Agency in Europe, Bremen, Lumière, p. 297-307 and Contrôle, identité, parrhèsia : une approche foucaltienne du Web 2.0, in “Communication et Langages”, June 2014, p. 7-24,
In time I edited the theme of the bound between digitalisation phenomena and generation or age group belonging, also thanks to the increasing collaboration with a net of colleagues in Italy and Europe. In particular a long series of research allowed me to practice several empirical studies, using both surveys and qualitative methods (in particular focus groups, in depth interviews, ethnography in presence and through online techniques). I quote as publication examples these two fields in analysis F. Colombo, L. Fortunati (eds), Broadband Society and Generational Changes, Berlin, Peter Lang 2011, F. Colombo, P. Aroldi and New Elders, Old Divides: ICTs, Inequalities and Well Being amongst Young Elderly Italians (with P. Aroldi and S. Carlo), in “Comunicar”, vol. 23, 2015, p. 1134-3478 e F. Colombo, M.F. Murru, S. Tosoni, The Post-Intermediation of Truth. Newsmaking from Media Companies to Platforms, in “Social Communications” vol. 2017, p. 448-461.
In the meanwhile, I have never stopped studying and examine in depth the discourse analysis, also applied to the spread of pictures online. The results of these works are being published soon (in particular I point out the curatorship, with Maria Francesca Murru, of the next international special issue about "Information problems" and the theme of image and photography in the current media overview).
