Essays Beyond Borders

Field: Higher education

Unipi Team Leader: Roberta Ferrari, Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics

Objectives
The EBB objectives are to:
- promote essayistic writing as a tool for civic engagement and active citizenship;
- strengthen the participants’ critical and creative thinking skills;
- encourage participants to develop their voice through self-reflective writing based on individual experience;
- provide participants with ways of thinking about and addressing the effects of climate change; and
- conduct and disseminate research on the contemporary uses of the essay in democratic societies.

Activities
EBB will conduct the following activities:
- A minimum of 28 essay-writing workshop series, ranging from 3 to 18 hours of contact time each, in Malta, Italy, Belgium, Slovenia and the Netherlands;
- Writing workshops for 280-350 participants, including post-secondary and tertiary students as well as members of the public;
- An intensive Easter School for for 40-100 scholars, writers and postgraduate students;
- Disseminate research on the essay through open source publications.

Impact
EBB will:
- Introduce participants to various essayistic writing skills through workshop series;
- Improve the participants' ability to actively engage with public issues through essayistic writing;
- Strengthen the participants' writing, specifically in terms of voice, self-reflection and civic engagement;
- Provide teachers and lecturers with pedagogic material on essay-writing;
- Innovative Research on the impact of the writing workshops;
- Disseminate Open Access research.

Coordinator: UNIVERSITA TA MALTA (Malta)

Other participants:

Društvo Slovenskih Pisateljev (Slovenia)
Universita di Pisa
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Netherlands)
Universiteit Gent (Belgium)

Start date: 22-12-2023

End date: 21-12-2026

EU Grant: 400.000,00 €