Via G. Garibaldi 61/63
22100 Como
Como
Italy
- Research
The Department has 17 members (Professors and lectures) and one permanent secretary. The Head of the Department is regularly elected and he fulfills his role pro tempore. The Department is autonomous in its research.
The Department's budget is about 150,000-200,000 euros a year and it mainly comes from public institutions for research activities.
The Department organises seminars, workshops, conferences and a Summer School on Comparative Law, with a special focus on the themes of Multiculturalism and Languages and Law.
In the organization of its activities, the Department works with other university bodies and also with private partners, depending on the field of the research.
In 2005 prof. Alessandro Ferrari joined the Department. His activities have been and are concentrated on the topic of Law and Religion, with particular focus on the relationships between Islamic and European Law. Scholars on both sides of the Mediterranean are involved in this research.
The main research project addresses state and religion in the context of Mediterranean Islamic Countries (i.e., Algeria; Egypt; Jordan; Libya; Morocco; Palestine, Syria, Turkey and Tunisia) and it is the first step of a wider project aiming to:
1) collect and catalogue the laws of “Islamic countries” (i.e., the countries with a Muslim majority) devoted to regulating religious affairs;
2) provide a documented and structured analysis of the relationship between Religion and State in contemporary “Muslim countries”, which will be divided in four geo-political areas: Islam in Mediterranean Countries; Islam in Gulf States; Islam in Africa; and Islam in South and Southeast Asia.
3) build a network of researchers from “Muslim countries” specialised in Law and Religion and able to cooperate with other networks in the same field (e. g.: the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies ).