Abstract

The participation of Italian universities in mobility programmes addressed to students and young researchers in the early post-war years is an area of study little investigated. This paper thus intends to contribute to a better understanding of the theme. It focusses on the case of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, an institution, which in the post-war years found itself rethinking its identity as well as its international profile and relations with foreign institutions. Through extensive research at the School’s historical archives, the paper reconstructs the means and ends of the School’s participation on international mobility programmes – both incoming and outgoing – highlighting the opportunities enjoyed and difficulties encountered by School management and students. During the years between 1945 and 1960, under the management of Luigi Russo and Ettore Remotti, the School overcame the difficulties of the immediate post-war years and actively participated on international university mobility programmes, whose impact was felt not only on undergraduates’ and graduates’ education, but the School’s teaching. The events reconstructed from archive material are contextualised in the broadest international picture, marked by the cultural diplomacy carried out by the United States with countries of the Atlantic bloc and by attempts to establish, or re-establish, «ex novo», cultural relations between European states following their breakdown imposed by the Second World War.