Anna Siri

By Anna Siri

Heritage is inherently communicative; it is designed to transmit and represent. As stated by UNESCO, living heritage is fundamental because it provides communities and individuals with a sense of identity and continuity. It can help promote social cohesion, respect for cultural diversity and human creativity, as well as help communities build resilient, peaceful and inclusive societies. Ensuring that cultural heritage fulfils the function for which it was conceived and generated, even in the case of closures forced by health emergencies, means enhancing it, giving it the possibility to continue transmitting culture. In the current COVID-19 global pandemic scenario, we are helped by the many educational strategies available today thanks to science and technology that enable people of all ages to learn continuously, anytime, anywhere and in a variety of situations combining formal, non-formal and informal learning. The current scenario has forced a redesign of the way citizens, and especially students, access their formal education. This contribution aims to highlight the importance of using the self-determined approach for training and proposes a blended learning model (formal in virtual classrooms and informal in a museum) for intercultural education of health professionals. A model which can be reproduced in continuing education and which represents an innovative way of experiencing heritage in any situation.

Part of the book: Teacher Education

By Rita Bencivenga, Cinzia Leone and Anna Siri

Since its fifth framework programme (1998–2002), the European Union has promoted gender equality and equal opportunities in the higher education sector and science and technological development. In its current framework programme for research and innovation, Horizon Europe (2021–2027), the EU requires scientists to systematically integrate the concepts of sex, gender and intersectionality into their research paths and to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in their working environments. However, for historical reasons, following the EU requirements is challenging, particularly for scientists in STEM disciplines. The University of Genoa is planning a MOOC suited to a large research institution audience to address this problem. The MOOC’s targets are researchers, scholars, administrative personnel and students interested in advancing EDI practices in the scientific fields. It enables them to understand the basic principles underlying the gender mainstreaming adopted by the EU and integrate methods and strategies related to sex, gender and intersectionality to progress towards an EDI-sensitive institution. Supported by a learner-centred instructional strategy, this chapter explores the choices related to EDI-sensitive methods and strategies adopted to develop and implement an online education path. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Part of the book: MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses)

By Adine Gavazzi and Anna Siri

The precolonial societies of the Andes and the Amazon and their ancestral memory among living cultures have always shown a central interest in the concept of death, to which innumerable material and immaterial testimonies bear witness. Huge necropolises, cemeteries inhabited by heirs, urban ceremonial centres, remains, and booty constantly reused in altars testify to a daily and indestructible relationship with all that dies. Underlying this pervasive, persistent, and millenary cult is the idea that the dead do not leave the living but wait for them in another region of time, accessible through the care of the loot, their memory, and collective ceremonies. From the Paracas and Nasca tombs, which build an entire cosmovision around a burial, to the demonstration of the earthly and spiritual power of the Moche rulers, to the Inca mummies ritually led in procession according to the rules of the calendar, the signal of eternal time constantly penetrates the diachrony of life, celebrating its flow that oscillates between births and deaths. Periodic visits to cemeteries to eat and talk with the dead, the recovery of skulls to recall ancestors in votive form, and the constant symbolic recreation of the cosmos keep alive the memory of spirits eternally alive and redeemed from their mortal spoils.

Part of the book: Indigenous People - Traditional Practices and Modern Development