Five USI researchers awarded SNSF Postdoc.Mobility funding

Five researchers from USI are among the recipients of the latest SNSF Postdoc call.Mobility programme, promoted by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Two of them have been awarded fellowships to conduct research at international institutions. At the same time, another three will benefit from a Return Grant to Switzerland (CH), which aims to support their return and reintegration into Swiss research.

The SNSF Postdoc.Mobility programme supports young researchers who have recently obtained their PhD or are about to complete it, offering them the opportunity to conduct a research period at institutions of excellence abroad. The aim is to foster scientific independence, acquire new skills, and strengthen international collaborations. During their stay abroad, beneficiaries can also obtain a Return Grant to Switzerland (CH)—complementary funding that supports their return to Switzerland, covering a research period at a Swiss institution and facilitating their reintegration into the national academic system.

SNSF Postdoc.Mobility

Two USI researchers have been awarded an SNSF Postdoc.Mobility fellowship to conduct a research period abroad at institutions of excellence, to broaden their international experience and consolidate their academic career.

Between Sign and Image: The Language and Style of Cesare Brandi

Luca Trissino, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society – Institute of Italian Studies, will spend nine months at the University of Siena and fifteen months at the University of Chicago, starting on 1 July 2027. His project, funded with CHF 122,870, is entitled: Between Sign and Image: The Language and Style of Cesare Brandi.

His research aims to offer a linguistic and stylistic study of the poetry and essays of Cesare Brandi, a central figure in 20th-century Italian and international culture. Brandi is renowned not only for his foundational theory of restoration but also for his contributions to aesthetic reflection, art criticism, and architectural criticism—contributions that, however, still tend to remain in the background. Starting with archival research in Siena, the first phase of the project involves philological investigations aimed at historicising the developments of Brandi’s aesthetics and examining his lyrical production. The second phase, based in Chicago, will focus on the stylistic analysis of the vocabulary, syntax, and rhetoric of his art and architectural criticism, with constant attention to the relationship between poetry and figurative criticism, literature, and art history.

How "Buy Now, Pay Later" Platforms are Changing Consumers' Relationship with Debt

Cristina Paradiso, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society – Institute of Marketing and Communication Management, will spend two years at the ESSEC Business School in Paris, starting on 1 October 2026. His research project, funded with CHF 110,600, is entitled: The Normalisation of Indebtedness Through Buy Now, Pay Later Digital Scripts.

Her research aims to understand how "Buy Now, Pay Later" platforms are changing people's relationship with debt. An increasing number of consumers use these services to split payments into multiple instalments. However, it is not yet clear how these platforms—and the features of their interfaces—influence consumer habits and contribute to the increasing prevalence of debt in daily life.

The study adopts a one-year qualitative longitudinal research design involving 20 young users of Buy Now, Pay Later platforms. Through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and diaries, the research will analyse how these platforms are integrated into daily consumption practices and how they influence purchasing decisions. The goal is to understand the role of digital financial platforms in the rise of consumer debt, identify useful tools to promote more conscious financial practices, and counter the phenomenon of overconsumption.

Return Grant to Switzerland (CH)

Three USI researchers have also been awarded a Return Grant to CH, a complementary funding scheme of the SNSF Postdoc.Mobility programme that supports their return to Switzerland after their period of international mobility, fostering the continuation of their research activities at a Swiss institution and the consolidation of their academic career.

Productives et bien peuplées : The French Countryside in the Discourse on "Petite Culture" (1750–1789) – Interim Results and New Perspectives

Aris Della Fontana, who holds a PhD in History obtained through a joint doctorate (cotutelle) between the University of Lausanne and Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, was a chercheur postdoctorant (postdoctoral researcher) at the Institut national d'études démographiques in 2024–2025. In 2025–2026, he held the same role at the Institut des sciences sociales du politique at the Université Paris Nanterre. During this stay abroad, made possible by a Postdoc.Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, he studied the discourse in favour of "petite culture" (small-scale farming) in late 18th-century France.

This research, based on the analysis of multiple types of sources—including agronomic treatises, texts on political economy, periodical articles, and manuscripts from the Sociétés Royales d'Agriculture—has revealed the existence of a reform project aimed at dividing large agricultural estates into smaller landholdings to be leased to smallholders and tenant farmers. According to its supporters, this transition would have increased crop productivity while protecting the well-being of the rural population, thus laying the foundation not only for a social pact between peasants and large landowners but also for the spread of patriotism and the containment of rural exodus to the cities.

As the recipient of an SNSF Postdoc.Mobility Return CH Grant, from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027, Aris Della Fontana will be a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of the History of the Alps (LabiSAlp) of the Academy of Architecture at the Università della Svizzera italiana. There, he will prepare a monograph on the research conducted in France, benefiting from the scientific support of Professor Luigi Lorenzetti, coordinator of LabiSAlp and a specialist in the economic and social history of the countryside. Furthermore, he will develop a new project to conduct a comparative study of small-scale agriculture across the transnational space of the Alps.

A Combined Theoretical Framework for Analysing Written Public Discourse on the Climate Crisis in Italian

Daria Evangelista holds a PhD in Italian Linguistics and is currently a visiting postdoc at the University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication, Persuade research group). There, she is conducting a research project on climate crisis communication in Italian, titled "The awareness-raising discourse on the climate crisis." An analysis of written texts in Italian at the interplay between rhetoric, argumentation theory and text linguistics. This project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation through a two-year Postdoc.Mobility fellowship (CHF 120,900, 2025–2026).

Starting in February 2027, thanks to a one-year Return Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (CHF 104,819), she will continue the project at USI's Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics (IALS), under the supervision of Professor Sara Greco.

During her visiting period, Dr Evangelista conducted parallel theoretical analyses to identify useful concepts for studying climate crisis communication (including the persuasive potential and argumentative uses of metaphor and framing, as well as the awareness-raising function of argumentation). She also carried out descriptive analyses of climate discourse, focusing, for example, on the pragmatic features of international environmental treaties.

Upon her return to USI, the project will take the title A Combined Theoretical Framework for Analysing Written Public Discourse on the Climate Crisis in Italian and will be further developed on a theoretical level. In particular, the research will bring recent theories of metaphor and polyphony into dialogue with the Argumentum Model of Topics—a theoretical model developed at USI's Lugano-based IALS—to investigate key elements of effective public communication on the climate crisis.

ArPeR: Archive of Romanesco Periodicals

Martina Ludovisi is the head of the ArPeR project (Archivio dei periodici romaneschi / Archive of Romanesco Periodicals), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation since 2024. The project has created a digital archive of periodicals published in the Romanesco dialect between 1870 and 1920. Through the census, digitisation, and transcription of materials, the project has made texts that are often difficult to find accessible, offering new tools for the analysis of Romanesco and the linguistic and cultural transformations of post-unification Rome.

The new line of research, developed at USI, will expand this investigation to the language of Rome and representations of "Roman-ness" (romanità) during the two decades of the Fascist regime. It aims to examine how Rome's dialect literature positioned itself in relation to the regime. Following a phase of recovering and digitising materials, the focus will turn to the idea of Rome promoted in these magazines, comparing it with the image that emerged in the Roman press of the first post-unification decades to identify elements of continuity or discontinuity. Subsequently, the study will examine how these periodicals and their dialect writers aligned with, opposed, or adapted to Fascism, with a particular focus on the lexical level. It will examine how the regime's rhetoric filtered through Romanesco: which ideological formulas penetrated dialect literature, which elements were progressively excluded, and which ones became dominant.