This article explores the creation and operation of the Italian National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC), a research infrastructure established under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). It analyses the governance, multidisciplinary collaborations, and third mission activities within the NBFC, using an ethnographic case study focused on Spoke 6. The analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the Center, offering scenarios for its future sustainability after PNRR funding ends.

The collaboration between university and industry under the institutional arrangement of the University Third Mission has been widely investigated by scholars and, more recently, with an increasing focus on the importance of trust. In this line of research, based on the study of six cases of collaboration in one of the more economically developed regions of Italy, this article aims at analysing how trust is produced - or constructed - by actors involved in the collaborative relationships to identify different processes, factors, dynamics by which such a construction takes place, shape and content, and to discuss its contribution to the rise and maintenance of such collaborations.

The pandemic has forced all organizations, public and private, to suddenly change the way they operate to adapt to the limitations imposed by governments. According to many authors, the pandemic period represented a moment of enormous acceleration of the digital transition process that we were all already experiencing. Even universities needed to convert all their assets very quickly according to remote/agile work paradigm. Teaching activities were reconfigured to be conducted with remote teaching tools, largely using digital communication platforms. This article presents the results of a research involving a national representative sample of university teachers. They were asked, on the one hand, to reconstruct the main features of the teaching experience during the first phase of the pandemic, and on the other, to evaluate its effectiveness and results. Finally, they were asked to evaluate how much the techniques learned could be useful in the post-Covid period in ordinary teaching and how useful they consider adopting a hybrid or blended model of teaching. The data presented allow us to offer some initial reflections on the effective acceleration of the digital transition process of university teaching and the actual level of transformation that the pandemic period has triggered.

The pandemic has forced all organizations, public and private, to suddenly change the way they operate to adapt to the limitations imposed by governments. According to many authors, the pandemic period represented a moment of enormous acceleration of the digital transition process that we were all already experiencing. Even universities needed to convert all their assets very quickly according to remote/agile work paradigm. Teaching activities were reconfigured to be conducted with remote teaching tools, largely using digital communication platforms. This article presents the results of a research involving a national representative sample of university teachers. They were asked, on the one hand, to reconstruct the main features of the teaching experience during the first phase of the pandemic, and on the other, to evaluate its effectiveness and results. Finally, they were asked to evaluate how much the techniques learned could be useful in the post-Covid period in ordinary teaching and how useful they consider adopting a hybrid or blended model of teaching. The data presented allow us to offer some initial reflections on the effective acceleration of the digital transition process of university teaching and the actual level of transformation that the pandemic period has triggered.

A seguito delle riforme dei sistemi di istruzione superiore realizzate negli ultimi decenni nei paesi europei, le università sono state incoraggiate ad aprirsi al contesto socio-economico e a impegnarsi maggiormente in quella che è stata chiamata la loro "terza missione" sia nella sua dimensione economica sia in quella dell'impegno pubblico e sociale. Basandosi sui dati raccolti intervistando un campione di più di cinquemila accademici italiani, l'articolo mostra quanto sia ampia l'adesione alla richiesta di maggiore apertura dell'università verso la società e l'economia, quanto siano condivise le finalità economiche e sociali della terza missione a livello individuale e di dipartimento, quanto sia intenso l'impegno degli accademici nelle attività di public engagement e se tale impegno poggi o meno su due basi distinte, una di tipo valoriale e una di tipo organizzativo.

Introduction to monographic section.

The article aims at investigating Italian academics’ Public Engagement highlighting its two dimensions, namely “Local Community Engagement” (LCE) and “General Political Engagement” (GPE). It is based on the results of a national survey on academics’ third mission activities carried out in the year 2015/2016 collecting information from a representative sample of 5,123 respondents working at 62 universities, with a response rate of 34.2%. In addition to detecting distinct dimensions of academics’ Public Engagement, data analysis shows that Italian academics are much more involved in LCE activities than in GPE ones. Although both LCE and GPE are influenced by many common factors, such as academic rank, discipline and being involved in other third mission activities, they also display peculiar traits: LCE activities are more likely to involve academic women while GPE are more likely to be carried out by older academics; LCE activities appear to be context-dependent while GPE activities are not. Hence, the article offers a contribution to a better understanding of the different goals of Public Engagement activities and of their spatial dimension.

Pavia is a city with 70,000 inhabitants 40 km south of Milan, the regional capital of Lombardy, one of the more populated and rich Italian regions. The University of Pavia was established in 1361 and until the 20th century has been the only university in the area of Milan and in Lombardy. Todays within the region there are 13 universities, 7 of which are located in Milan. Seven institutions, including Pavia University, are state universities.

The health personnel are among the most requested ones in the field of international cooperation. Unfortunately, university training in the health sector does not provide for a specific course oriented to training in the field of cooperation. Specific training on health cooperation are post-graduate training or field experiences outside the degree course. A questionnaire was administered to the medical and nursing students of Brescia and Pavia to explore their knowledge, interests and attitudes towards cooperation. Our analysis confirmed the lack of knowledge about the international cooperation, but at the same time an interest by students to fill this gap.

EnglishThe term Public Engagement refers to a variety of activities aimed at engaging universities within the public sphere and, correspondingly, at involving the public in 1he teaching, research and service activities of universities. These activities - which are largely carried out by faculty either on a mere individual basis or as an institutional duty - provide an opportunity to strengthen the relationships between universities and their territories. Relying on the results of a survey on more than 5,000 academics working at Italian public universities, the article aims at showing how frequent academics' Public engagement is, who are the academics mostly engaged in these activities, and whether there are territorial differences in this kind of engagement. The article also provides an assessment of the social and economic impact of Public engagement activities, especially at the local and regional levels. Distinguishing between two dimensions of academics' Public engagement, namely «Local Community Engagement» and «General Political Engagement», the article shows that Italian academics' participation in the former is considerable while their participation in the latter is limited. These findings suggest that academics' Public engagement indeed provides an opportunity to link universities to their territories. Local community engagement varies according to some individual characteristics such as academics' discipline and their involvement on other «Third mission» activities, but not to others. In particular, faculty working in Southern Italy and the Islands, the less developed regions of the country, and those _working in North-West Italy, the most developed part of the country, are equally involved in Local communtty engagement. Finally, according to academics' perceptions their Local community engagement has a more social than economic impact. italianoIntroduzione. -Il Public Engagement.-Dati e metodi.-Le attivita di Public Engagement: diffusione e dimensioni rilevanti-Le caratteristiche che influenzano l'impegno nel Local Community Engagement. -L'impatto territoriale del Public Engagement. -Conclusioni.

The term Public Engagement refers to a variety of activities aimed at engaging universities within the public sphere and, correspondingly, at involving the public in the teaching, research and service activities of universities. These activities - which are largely carried out by faculty either on a mere individual basis or as an institutional duty - provide an opportunity to strengthen the relationships between universities and their territories. Relying on the results of a survey on more than 5,000 academics working at Italian public universities, the article aims at showing how frequent academicsu0027 Public engagement is, who are the academics mostly engaged in these activities, and whether there are territorial differences in this kind of engagement. The article also provides an assessment of the social and economic impact of Public engagement activities, especially at the local and regional levels. Distinguishing between two dimensions of academicsu0027 Public engagement, namely .Local Community Engagement. and .General Political Engagement., the article shows that Italian academicsu0027 participation in the former is considerable while their participation in the latter is limited. These findings suggest that academicsu0027 Public engagement indeed provides an opportunity to link universities to their territories. Local community engagement varies according to some individual characteristics such as academicsu0027 discipline and their involvement on other .Third mission. activities, but not to others. In particular, faculty working in Southern Italy and the Islands, the less developed regions of the country, and those working in North-West Italy, the most developed part of the country, are equally involved in Local community engagement. Finally, according to academicsu0027 perceptions their Local community engagement has a more social than economic impact.

The article aims at underlining the role played by extra-academic and autonomous organizations strongly connected with university institutions and researchers in producing, acquiring, transferring and transforming knowledge. The study examines a particular Italian case, the Politecnico Calzaturiero, a private institution providing technical training and research services operating in North-eastern Italy. The analysis of this experience suggests that, in traditional manufacturing areas, organizations playing a key role in managing the ‘productive transformation of knowledge’ may be neither universities nor firms. ‘Special organizations’, like the one discussed in this article, are deeply embedded in their economic and institutional environment, are closely interconnected within a dense and extended network of various actors, engage in complex and time-consuming processes, and can be understood as organizational relé, that is entities which are able to connect structures that are usually not connected. For these reasons, they represent an underestimated resource for universities’ third mission and its management.

The internationalisation of the academy varies according to individual, institutional and structural characteristics. Among factors influencing it, discipline plays a major role. Relying on data collected by two international comparative studies – the Changing Academic Profession Study and the Academic Profession in Europe Study – this article focuses on two aspects of the internationalisation of the academy – namely, international research collaboration and international mobility – asking whether these two aspects are associated with academic disciplines and how. Results from multivariate data analyses – comparing Europe and the Rest of the World or other meaningful macro-regions – show that in some areas, such as international research collaboration and educational circulation, the international behaviours of academics belonging to different disciplines diverge, while in some others, such as research productivity related to international research collaboration and short-term professional circulation, they converge.