Swinging Peripheries and Centers in Europe (SPACE): Comparative Legal Dimensions of Territory

Principal Investigator: Prof. Sabrina RAGONE

SPACE challenges the traditional, State-based legal approach to territory through the lens of the center/periphery cleavage by investigating the processes of configuration and reconfiguration of centers and peripheries in Europe over the past decades. A robust COMPARATIVE METHODOLOGY, characterized as well by openness, inclusiveness, gender balance and internationalization will be applied to all dimensions. SPACE’s innovative, comprehensive and critical assessment of the legal dimensions of territory requires a comparative and multidimensional approach, relying on 3 research streams. First, the EUROPEAN DIMENSION: INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION will contribute to the debate on the transformations of centers and peripheries in the recent EU integration crises, contrasting the analysis of new legal patterns of differentiation with the traditional (political and economic) classifications of cleavages such as “creditor/debtor” or “frugal-solidarity open” member states. Second, the COOPERATIVE RELATIONAL DIMENSION will be addressed through a trans-scalar approach to investigate how cooperative mechanisms, at the domestic level (in decentralized Member States) and at the EU level (with respect to cross-border and macro-regional strategies), redefine the legal concept of territory as a “fuzzy space” which can be adapted according to concrete interests, regardless of national borders. Third, the discussion of the SPATIAL DIMENSION OF RIGHTS will unveil how space defines and is defined by the way rights are constructed, contested and implemented, creating variable geometries of centers and peripheries. Political rights; disability rights; and the right to education, in their diverse scope, justiciability and enforcement, will allow to discuss the impact of rights on the center/periphery divide. SPACE will be developed by 5 research units: UNIBO (University of Bologna), UNIVR (University of Verona), UNICAL (University of Calabria), UNIFI (University of Florence) and LUM (LUM University De Gennaro, Casamassima–Bari). 

Website: https://site.unibo.it/vernacosm 

Members of the Department

Silvia Bagni

Giorgia Pavani

Sabrina Ragone

Other members

Publications:

• Matteo Nicolini, Alice Valdesalici, Local Governance in Multi-Layered Systems. A Comparative Legal Study in the Federal-Local Connection, Springer, 2023 

• Matteo Nicolini , Cristina Poncibò (eds) Special Issue "Comparative Law and Legal Geography", 4 Legalities 1,(2024),  

• Comparative Law and Legal Geography: The Path towards Interdisciplinarity, Matteo Nicolini and Cristina Poncibò, pp. 21–24 

• The Unfulfilled Promise of Interdisciplinarity in Comparative Law: Dialogues with Legal Geographers, Cristina Poncibò, pp.25–42 

• The Land, the Sea, and the Colonial Production of Space within the Anglo/British Empire, Matteo Nicolini, pp. 43–67 

• More-Than-Human Promise: Relationality, Materiality, and Performativity, Irem Ince Keller, Maurice Yip, and Jean Ruegg, pp. 68–97 

• Spatial Injustice and the Informal Housing Market in the United States: How Predatory Practices Impact upon Geographies, Lorenzo Serafinelli, pp. 98–113 

• All of Us Strangers, 2023, film, Blueprint Pictures/Film4/Searchlight Picture. Directed by Andrew Haigh, William MacNeil, pp. 114–117 

• Matteo Nicolini, “When the sea does have character: post-Brexit maritime cooperation as placeconsciousness”, Belgeo [Online], 4 | 2024,  

• Enrico Andreoli, “Shaping UK’s Territorial Constitution”. Il difficile rapporto tra ‘centro’ e ‘periferia’ nella devolution scozzesein Costituzionalismo britannico e irlandese, n. 1/2024, p. 198 ss. 

• Enrico Andreoli, A ‘Constitutionalized Colonialism’. The Impact of the Monroe Doctrine on the Puerto Rican Legal System – DPCE Online, 2/2024 

• Stefano Bargiacchi,  Una lenta apertura (?), l’evoluzione degli strumenti partecipativi nei Regolamenti delle Camere. Rass. Parl. 1/2024 

• Renato Ibrido (2024). Nuovi diritti e strumenti partecipativi: osservazioni minime. In: Paolo Bargiacchi, Fausto Vecchio. Nuovi diritti e nuove tecniche di tutela della persona in tempi di crisi, pp. 129-135, Genova: Consulta online 

• Giampaolo Gerbasi, La Convenzione ONU nell’ordinamento dell’Unione europea: limiti e prospettive nella ricerca di una maggiore adesione al modello sociale di disabilità, in www.lceonline.eu, 2024. 

• Greta Massa Gallerano, Relazioni intergovernative e nuove dinamiche di cooperazione degli Stati decentrati? Una comparazione tra Spagna e Italia, Atti del X Convegno annuale dell’Associazione di Diritto pubblico comparato ed Europeo: Il Governo nei sistemi Parlamentari, DPCE online [in corso di pubblicazione]. 

• Greta Massa Gallerano, Luces y sombras de la aplicación del regionalismo diferenciado en Italia en perspectiva comparada, in Revista de Derecho Constitucional Europeo, [in corso di pubblicazione]. 

• Greta Massa Gallerano, Autonomía financiera, nivelacióny diferenciación. El caso de las regiones italianas en el marco constitucional, in Revista Dominicana de Derecho Constitucional , [in corso di pubblicazione]. 

• Giovanni D’Orio, Salvatore Straface, Carlos Mestanza-Ramón, Samantha Jiménez-Oyola, Alex Vinicio Gavilanes Montoya, , Danny Daniel Castillo Vizuete, Demmy Jussey Mora-Silva, Luis Carrera Almendáriz, Santiago Logroño-Naranjo, Risks to Human Health from Mercury in Gold Mining in the Coastal Region of Ecuador, in TOXICS, vol. 12, fasc. 5, 2024. 

• Giovanni D’Orio, Carlos Mestanza-Ramón, Samantha Jiménez-Oyola, Alex Vinicio Gavilanes Montoya, Danny Daniel Castillo Vizuete, Juan Cedeño-Laje, Doménica Urdánigo, Salvatore Straface, Human health risk assessment due to mercury use in gold mining areas in the Ecuadorian Andean region, in Chemosphere, vol. 344, December 2023. 

• Anna Margherita Russo, La forma di governo tra livello regionale e locale: asimmetrie e omogeneità nello Estado de las Autonomías, in Le Regioni, n. 4/2023. 

• Anna Margherita Russo, Maria Isabel Wences Simón, Los pueblos indígenas en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos. El enfoque de la diversidad cultural entre la teoría del reconocimiento y el derecho de propiedad comunitaria, in D. Montalván Zambrano, M.I. Wences Simón (coords.), La justicia detrás de la justicia: Ideas y valores políticos en la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Marcial Pons, 2023. 

• Silvia Bagni, Rappresentanza e rappresentazione del pluralismo etnico e linguistico in un contesto interculturale e plurinazionale, in R. Toniatti (a cura di), La rappresentanza delle minoranze linguistiche, Università di Trento, Trento, 2023, pp. 110-133, https://doi.org/10.15168/11572_372279  

• Sabrina Ragone, Of Centers and Peripheries of the European Legal Space: Legal Comparison from the German Perspective, under review, Revista de Derecho Político, 2025.

Conferences, lectures and talks

• The Role and Legitimacy of National Constitutional Courts: Reconfiguring Centers and Peripheries in the EU 

24 January 2025 

University of Bologna 

• The Comparative Law of Secession Before National Courts 

21 November 2024 

University of Verona Law School 

• Centers and Peripheries as Perspectives of Comparative Law 

06 November 2024 

University of Bologna 

• Cemento armato. La politica dell'illegalità nelle città italiane (di Francesco Chiodelli) 

04 November 2024 

Società Letteraria di Verona/University of Verona 

• Il governo del territorio transfrontaliero 

12 September - 13 September 2024 

University of Verona Law School 

• Centros, periferias, territorio en la jurisprudencia comparada (Summer School session) 

28 June 2024 

University of Bologna 

• Democratic Erosion: Centers and Peripheries 

27 May 2024 

University of Bologna 

• Il dibattito sulla proposta di legge di amnistia in Spagna: Elementi costituzionali e politici 

16 May 2024 

University of Bologna 

• La rilevanza della Compact Theory e il diritto di secessione nel diritto comparato 

06 May 2024 

University of Calabria 

• Contronarrazioni costituzionali e populismi nel diritto comparato 

06 May 2024 

University of Calabria 

• Constitutional Governance in Africa 

27 February - 29 February 2024 

University of Verona School of Law 

• Comparative Courts. Theory and Practice of Constitutional Litigation 

08 January - 12 January 2024 

University of Verona School of Law 

• Comparative Legal Dimensions of Territory: kick off meeting 

15 December 2023 

University of Bologna 

• I confini dell’Europa 

12 December 2023 

University of Verona School of Law 

• Judicial Review of Federal Grounds in Africa 

07 December 2023 

University of Verona School of Law 

• La Costituzione dell'Algoritmo. Verso un Nuovo "Costituzionalismo Digitale"? 

06 December 2023 

University of Calabria