Federica SANTAGATI

Professor of Museology (L-Art / 04) at the University of Catania. She also taught Museology at other Italian  universities (Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, University of Enna "Kore").

Institutional and professional activities:  Scientific Director of the ‘Museo della Fabbrica’ of the Benedictine Monastery (Museum System of the University of Catania).

Member of the Committee of the University Museums and Collections of ICOM (International Council of Museums) and  of the European Academic Heritage Network, with an active role in some working groups. She had a previous role in the thematic commission of ICOM Italy Museum staff, training and up dating.

 She has published various essays on museology in national and international journals, in conference proceedings, in collective volumes. Her researches concern  training of artists, the history of collecting, as well as the organization and preparation of museums and exhibitions between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the course of her research, she also focused attention on  the organization and functioning of public and private museums, including the most innovative communication models. She is interested in the exchange of "good practices" in the museum environment, especially related to museum quality standards and the use of museums by people with physical disabilities. For Città della Scienza, a museum of the University of Catania, she worked on the design of a section linked to the history of language, inserted in the scientific-technological context of this science center.

She studied in depth the issues related to the collections and university museums, with a particular focus on the third mission of the museums, analyzing the key applied up to now by ANVUR to university museum structures. More recently, as part of the fruition and enhancement of museums, it has been interested in the development of innovative practices linked to the territory and aimed at involving local communities, institutions and different publics, for the purpose of understanding the relative artistic and cultural heritage identity. She has carried out interdisciplinary research on local museums and, in collaboration with colleagues from Biblioteconomia and Archivistica (according to the lines suggested by the national coordination MAB - Museums, Archives, Libraries), has organized a course at the High School of the University of Catania on fruition of the cultural heritage of the territory, involving in the frequency of lessons also members of local public administrations operating in this field. She is currently conducting a study on the home of Admiral Horace Nelson located in the Municipality of Bronte, to relaunch the collections through a museological analysis.