Tips regarding academic jobs in Italy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Folks have asked about jobs in various European places before and the discussions are usually interesting. But on a quick search of the site I don’t see much about working in Italy. If anyone knows anything I’d love to hear it. Specific questions to get the ball rolling: how does the hiring process work? Are there job ads or do you just gotta have your ear to the ground? What’s pay like? What’s work like? Are professors respected in Italy? Stuff like that.

Great questions! Another reader submitted the following reply:

I'm Italian, working in another European country. All jobs are listed here: https://bandi.miur.it/ You have to search per area of specialisation, which are quite strict (Moral philosophy, Logic and Phil SC, etc). The majority of jobs will require proficiency in Italian and, I'd say, many jobs have internal candidates. For jobs that don't need Italian proficiency, you'll hear from the usual channels such as Philos, philjobs, etc. To be eligible to apply for Associate professorship, you need a national habilitation (called Abilitazione Nazionale). You need to meet some requirements in terms of publishing (most of the major philosophical journals are included in a list that a committee will consider) and service. For publishing, it's either a book or 10 articles/chapters in the past 5 years; a book and 3 articles from prestigious journals; or 10 articles/chapters and 3 articles from prestigious journals. Requirements of service are not really clear. There are also a few tenure track jobs: they are called 'ricercatore a tempo determinato b' (rtd b). When you get one of these jobs, you are promised a tenured position after 3 years, pending the achievement of the Abilitazione Nazionale. Pay is not very good, if compared to nearby countries such as Austria or Switzerland. Just anecdotally: when I was a VAP in the US, I made more money than an associate professor. However, unless you live in Rome or Milan, life is cheap and the quality of life is just great. Overall, I think that philosophers in Italy, if they are tenured, live a pleasant and intellectually stimulating life (at least the ones I know). They have tons of time for research and, in general, very few people cares about teaching (but that's something characterizing Europe overall). Moreover, I'd like to add that in my field (philosophy of science), there are great and competitive scholars.

This comment is really helpful, and enlightening to boot (as an outsider, it is always interesting to hear how things work in different countries!). Any other readers with experience in philosophy in Italy have any other helpful information to share?

Comments

[italian watching from afar]

It is very hard to break into the Italian academic system and historically required decades of servitude to the so-called "baroni" (the "barons", or senior professors). This is why so many Italian professors have sought academic careers outside of Italy (in Italian, this is a notorious problem called the "fuga dei cervelli" -- the fleeing/exodus of the brains; see information here on Italian wikipedia: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuga_di_cervelli), and so few foreigners have academic jobs within Italy. Most of the jobs advertised are not truly "open" searches.

Things seem to be changing somewhat now with some of the funding changes made at the EU level that incentivize internationalization, and some Italians with academic positions elsewhere have started returning in the past couple years to permanent positions in Italy (there has been funding from the Italian government to allow for this, which some universities -- I have heard anecdotally -- have even refused due to the changes it would wreak to their usual way of running things). But I just don't know to what extent things have changed enough that someone with no contacts or years in the system can break in (probably the changes of this are very low).

[Timmy J]

OP here: just wanted to say thanks for both of the responses. These are super helpful!