The Horizon Europe project RESPOND (Rescuing Democracy from Political Corruption in Digital Societies) led by the Department of Political and Social Science at the University of Bologna, is pleased to invite you to its hybrid seminar series.

Join us on April 14 at 1 PM (CET)for the seminar titled “What can be gained by engineering the concept of “corruption””, with professor Emanuela Ceva (University of Geneva).

This open seminar will be held both online and in person at Aula Jemolo, Palazzo Hercolani, at the University of Bologna.

We look forward to your participation!

About the seminar: 

Recent scholarship argues that improving a concept or “engineering” it can sharpen its normative and explanatory power. The talk discusses what ca be gained from conceptual engineering by examining the evolution of “corruption” as a case study. Traditionally defined as the “use of public power for private gain” corruption has been revisited to capture broader institutional dysfunctions. The recent re-engineering of corruption as a “deficit of office accountability” enhances the concept’s ability to capture uses of public power that may undercut institutional functioning beyond illegal acts including individual wrongdoing and faulty institutional design. Re-engineering corruption has normative value insofar as it helps policymakers and scholars alike to identify and address questionable uses of office power—including in nondemocratic regimes and nonpublic organizations. In the talk, I thereby argue that conceptual engineering can enhance methodological approaches to the study of corruption and corroborate their  practical relevance.

About the speaker:

Emanuela Ceva  is Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Geneva, where she the holder of an ERC/SNSF Advanced Grant on The Margins of Corruption. She has held fellowships at various institutions worldwide, including: the Center for Human Values of Princeton University; Nuffield College and the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford; Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo; University of St Andrews; Centre de Recherche en Étique de l’Université de Montréal; University of Hamburg; Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics of Harvard University; KU Leuven; and the Australian National University. She works primarily on the normative theory of institutions with a focus on democracy, corruption, institutional trust, and the political role of emotions. Her most recent books (co-written with Maria Paola Ferretti) are Political Corruption. The Internal Enemy of Public Institutions, (Oxford University Press 2021) and Etica Pubblica dell’Anticorruzione (Caorcci 2025). She is a founding member of the Swiss Political Theory Network.