Concept
Alberto Gasparini (born January 13, 1940, in Modena, Italy) is an Italian sociologist and professor of urban and rural sociology, of sociology of international relations and of techniques of forecasting. His research and theoretical studies concern the city and the housing, the symbolism of spaces, the cross-border co-operation, the civil societies and the international relations, the futures studies. He is founder and president of the International University Institute of the European Studies (IUIES), co-founder and secretary general of International Futures Research Academy (IFRA). Besides he is founder and director of the following journal: FUTURIBILI (New Edition), ISIG Journal, IUIES Journal. The prologue of the academic training of Alberto Gasparini was a research and the subsequent book on the history of international relations, in this case the dispute between the Church and the Dukes of Ferrara between October 1597 and January 1598. Alberto Gasparini graduated in Sociology from University of Trento (Italy) in 1969. He started working as junior and then senior researcher at the International Sociology Institute of Gorizia (ISIG) from 1970. He was lecturer and then associate professor in sociology of organizations at the University of Bologna from 1977 to 1987. In the 1983 was visiting scholar at University of Washington of Seattle. In the 1987 he became full professor of urban and rural sociology at the University of Trieste. In this University he taught also sociology of international relations and techniques of forecasting. In 1989 he was appointed director of ISIG, and then director of the Department of Human Sciences at the University of Trieste. In 1992 he started up a research doctorate (PhD) in Sociology of territorial and international phenomena, of which was coordinator. Alberto Gasparini, as director of ISIG, worked intensively on relations with scholar from, and on the problems of, the countries which emerged from the collapse of the communist system after 1989.