Elvira Di Bona - National Principal Investigator 

I am currently the PI of a PRIN PNRR 2022 project on how we perceive atmospheres (ATMOS) of ca. 230,000 € and a FIS project on the relationship between sound and memory (HeaR) of ca. 1 million €. 

My main research interests are in the philosophy of mind and aesthetics. I also work on several topics in the philosophy of language and philosophy of music. I published extensively on auditory perception, the metaphysics of sound, and the content of perceptual experience.

 I obtained my Ph.D. in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (Milan) and the Institut Jean Nicod (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris). During my Ph.D. course, I spent research periods at the New York University, as a Fulbright Scholar, and the University of Sydney, as an ARIA (Association for Research between Italy and Australasia) Grantee. Before joining the Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences in Turin as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Mind, I spent more than four years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Polonsky Academy at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (Israel). Before that, I held postdoctoral positions at the Italian Academy of Columbia University (NYC), Freie Universität Berlin (sponsored by DAAD), and the University of Turin (sponsored by Franco and Marilisa Caligara Foundation). 

I completed the “High Specialization Course in Music Studies – Solo Violin Performance” at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia (Rome) in 2008. I performed in concerts of classical and jazz music—in solo performances, and chamber and symphonic orchestras—in the U.S., the U.K., Italy, Germany, France, Romania, Croatia, and Venezuela.

E-Mail: elvira.dibona@unito.it 

Carola Barbero

Carola Barbero is a philosopher of language and literature and works mainly on  the metaphysics and ontology of fictional entities, aesthetics and emotions, the phenomenology of reading, the distinction between literary and ordinary language. She has been visiting at the University of Auckland (2007) and visiting professor at ETH Zurich (2020). She has been member of the Steering Committee of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy (2010-2012). She is the author of many papers published in international reviews, and among her books are Madame Bovary: Something Like a Melody (Milan, 2005), Who fears Mr. Hyde? (in Italian - Genoa, 2010), Philosophy of Literature (in Italian - Rome, 2013), Meaning (in Italian, with S. Caputo - Rome 2018), The door of Phantasy (in Italian – Bologna 2019) and That Shiver in the Back. The languages of literature (in Italian – Bologna 2023).

E-Mail: carola.barbero@unito.it 

Matteo Plebani

Matteo Plebani is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences of the University of Turin. He works on topics at the intersection between the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mathematics. He obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy from Ca' Foscari University, Venice, in 2011, with a thesis on Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. He has worked at universities in Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. He is the author of several papers (in journals such as Philosophical Studies, The Philosophical Quartely, Pacific Philosophical Quartely, Synthese, Inquiry, Ergo). In 2015 he jointly wrote with Francesco Berto the monograph Ontology and Metaontology (Bloomsbury Academic).

E-Mail: matteo.plebani@unito.it 

Alberto Voltolini

Alberto Voltolini (PhD Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1989) is a philosopher of language and mind whose works have focused mainly on intentionality, depiction and fiction, perception, and Wittgenstein. He is currently Professor in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Turin (Italy). He has got scholarships at the Universities of Geneva and Sussex. He has been visiting professor at the Universities of California, Riverside (1998), Australian National University, Canberra (2007), Barcelona (2010), London (2015), Auckland (2007, 2018), Antwerp (2019). He has been a member of the Steering Committee of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy (2002-2008), of the Board of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (2009-2012), and of the International Society for Fiction and Fictionality Studies (2018-2023). His publications include How Ficta Follow Fiction (Springer, 2006), as well as the “Fictional Entities” and the “Fiction” entries (with F. Kroon) of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction (Palgrave, 2015) and Down But Not Out (Springer, 2022).

E-Mail: alberto.voltolini@unito.it 

Mariaenrica Giannuzzi 

Mariaenrica Giannuzzi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turin as part of the ATMOS project. She holds a PhD in German Studies from Cornell University (2023), where she investigated aesthetics of nature configured through the literary trope of Kreatur, while working as a Teaching Assistant (2017–2021) and Research Assistant. She was a DAAD Fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin (2021–2022), Visiting Fellow at the ERC project "An-Icon" at La Statale University of Milan (2022–2023) and lecturer at La Sapienza University in Rome (2024). Her publications include Il male della natura. Critica della violenza, letteratura e storia naturale (Mimesis, 2023), Politics of the Creature: Geological Figures of German Modernism (Cornell eCommons, 2024), and studies on Paul Celan, Walter Benjamin, Heinrich von Kleist, Milena Jesenská and others. She is an active translator.

E-Mail: mariaenrica.giannuzzi@unito.it 

Carmen Bonasera

Carmen Bonasera is currently a postdoc researcher at the University of Turin as part of the ATMOS project, working on the concept of atmosphere as it relates to literary texts and narrative empathy. She obtained her PhD cum laude in Theory of literature and Comparative literature from the University of Pisa in 2020 and, afterwards, she held positions as postdoc at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2021-2022) and at the University of Bologna (2022-2023). She taught Critical Methodologies at Sapienza University of Rome (2021-2022) and Comparative Literature at the University of Turin (2021-2023). She achieved the National Scientific Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) as Associate Professor in Literary criticism and Comparative literature. In her first book, Aporie dell’Io. Identità e trasfigurazione nella poesia femminile del secondo Novecento (Mimesis, 2023), she explored the relationship between poetry and life writing in modern female authors. Her current research interests lie at the confluence of literary theory, psychology, and philosophy. She is particularly interested in the dynamics of narrative empathy for morally ambivalent and/or unreliable characters, which she is studying with theoretical, stylistic, and empirical approaches. 

E-Mail: carmen.bonasera@unito.it