"Social Research Prize" to USI: the award ceremony

The Ciao Table Association honours USI with a valuable work of art by the painter Renzo Ferrari of Cadro. The ceremony will be held on Thursday, 17 December at 2:00 pm on the Lugano West campus (V. Buffi 13, room 351). The award ceremony is not open to the public.

Ciao Table, a non-profit association whose aim is to promote social exchanges (www.ciaotable.org), has created the international Social Research Prize, an annual award for scientific research on social exchanges. The 2020 Social Research Prize will be awarded to Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) for the studies carried out in the innovative field of social neuroscience by Rosalba Morese, who conducts her teaching and research activities at the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society and the Institute of Public Health at USI.

The award ceremony will be attended by:

• the Mayor of the City of Lugano Marco Borradori
• the Rector of USI Boas Erez
• the author of the work Renzo Ferrari

Dr Rosalba Morese and, for Ciao Table, Dr Piera Serra will also be present.

Why the Social Research Prize 2020 at USI?

Rosalba Morese, through an interdisciplinary approach, has managed to combine two areas of different epistemological origin: social psychology and neuroscience. Her research, through the innovative application of neuroimaging methodologies to social sciences, contributes to new theoretical and experimental challenges in understanding the processes of social exclusion, socialisation, isolation and social support. Her studies on these topics follow an original approach, but also transversal as they highlight the neuronal mechanisms inherent in social and relational processes from adolescence to adulthood to the clinical declination in neurodegenerative diseases.

The Prize

The prize is a work by Renzo Ferrari "Plaga doctores, March-August 2020", oil on forex 100x70, created as part of the Corona Diary exhibition, as well as a copy of his very recent book Moleskine 2020 Pandemia. The book is enriched by a drypoint of the artist entitled "Sogno e presau" (Dream and Presau). The painting of the artist from Cadro expresses his experience during the forced pandemic seclusion, keeping a distance from the raw evidence of the media facts, acting instead on our ancestral memory. "Perhaps," the artist points out, "this involves a sort of catharsis in the face of this implacable and feral visitor that is Covid 19. Even the book Moleskine 2020 Pandemic wants to offer in the form of a daily figural diary the alarming condition of the rupture of natural balances that we are undergoing".

More information: at this link the photos of "Plaga doctores, March-August 2020", of the book Moleskine 2020 Pandemia and a recent bibliography of Rosalba Morese's scientific publications.