Our Research Center

Our Research Center

A community of research

“scientia Atque usus” Research Center  for Generative Communication (established in 1991) is a Research Body of the Nonprofit Sector with a specific political and social mission. It encourages cooperative communication between the world of scholars, experts and highly specialized professionals (scientia) and the world of actual citizens (usus).

Generative Communication helps to strengthen cooperation, to overcome the solitude, the self-referentiality and the mechanical logic of the assembly line on which our society is based. It promotes new collaboration patterns among stakeholders, supporting community building projects in finding resources.

sAu’s research activities promote and strengthen the value of community building projects.
Each project, based on common ideals, aims to transform shared values into valuable products.

Focus on sAu Intervention Areas
Health and Healthcare
sAu Research Center has been working for years in the area of health and healthcare with the aim to start knowledge-generating processes in which healthcare companies, hospitals, associations and institutions cooperate to increase the level of health literacy in the medical-scientific field of citizens.
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What does Generative Communication do?

Analyze

and enhance the perceived and the world of use

Build

communities in which stakeholders cooperate with  researchers and experts

Bring to light

unused resources to strengthen the quality and effectiveness of Projects and their products

Design

object oriented solutions, against the current trend towards fragmentation

Develop

sector innovations that create system innovation

Monitor

the impacts and innovation generated by the products/services

Participatory Action Research projects 

in Strategic Intervention Areas

We Implement Participatory Action Research Projects to Build 

Healthy Territories

The sAu Research Center operates in Intervention Areas with a significant socio-economic and cultural impact – from agriculture to healthcare, from sustainability to new technologies – and develops action research projects that promote maximum cooperation between the world of science and the world of practice.

All projects of the sAu Research Center strengthen communication between institutions, businesses, associations, and organizations involved in research, and professionals, contributing to the creation of healthy territories.

sAu Research Center works on Intervention Areas that range from agriculture to rural development, from health to healthcare, from sustainability to Cultural Heritage.
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How do We Work?
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sAu Research Center has created “Atque”, the Design and Communication System that supports stakeholders, researchers, experts and citizens in the development of Generative Communication Projects.

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Projects highlights

Our Values, our History

The Values that Inspire sAu Research Center

sAu Research Center identifies the complexity of society as an immense wealth of resources. It identifies the fragmentation of knowledge and skills as the main obstacle to scientific, civic and social progress.
Download the Charter of Values
Charter of Values 1
Charter of Values 2
Charter of Values 3
Charter of Values 4
Charter of Values 5
Charter of Values 6
Charter of Values 7
Charter of Values 8
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Charter of Values 10
Charter of Values 11
Charter of Values 12
Charter of Values 13
Our History, our Partners. Since 1991
Great projects need good travel companions.
The story below is dedicated to all those who have accompanied us so far.
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Our Intervention Areas

Agriculture and Rural Development

A New Idea and a New Practise of Value

The concept of value, and its practical application in all socio-economic, cultural and political sectors, must be radically redefined, moving away from a definition based on purely economic and financial parameters.

Our Projects are based on an idea of Agriculture and Rural Development aimed to redefine the concept of value in agriculture, strengthening, in a systemic key, the sharing of knowledge and the cooperation between all the realities that operate on the territory and that usually do not communicate with each other.

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Culture and Society

Knowledge and Practices to Build Shared Knowledge

We believe in a society in which everyone can exercise the right to live his/her daily lives – at work, in family, in community – in order to know, enrich and improve his/her own life.

sAu Research Center aims to broaden the concept of Cultural Heritage, proposing it as a tool through which to redesign the relationship between the tangible and intangible historical-cultural heritage and the socio-economic fabric. The projects in this area are based on community building activities to facilitate the collaboration of varied stakeholders and strengthen the identity characteristics that bring added value to the use of these important common assets.

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Research and Third Sector

For a New Culture of Research

We believe that it is more urgent than ever to defend the autonomy of the world of research, and its authority and credibility, redefining the relationship on the one hand with the values that inspire it and on the other with the complex world of daily living acts of citizens.

Coming soon

Coming soon

Health and Healthcare

Toward a New Communicative Pact Between Medical and Healthcare World and Citizens

We believe that the many, possible forms of participation in health choices and the ways of using social and health services should become acts of active and conscious citizenship.

sAu Research Center has been working for years in the field of health and healthcare with the aim to initiate knowledge-generating processes in which health companies, hospitals, associations and institutions cooperate to increase the level of health literacy of citizens.

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Daily sustainability
and Climate Change

A Common Action to Bring Out Unexpressed Resources

What we are experiencing is not a crisis due to a lack of resources, but it is due to the inability to recognize and value the infinite resources that we can find with our creativity and intelligence.

Coming soon

Coming soon

Technologies to Enhance
the Human Touch

The Enhancement of Human Creativity

Technologies (old and new ones), every form of automation, mechanical and otherwise, must be rethought and redesigned to respond, first of all, to the inalienable values of our humanity.

We believe in an idea of technology that is in support of human freedom and the right of individuals to know and guide their behavior according to the values in which they recognize themselves. It is a technology based on critical intelligence and human creativity: on human touch.

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Some of our Research Projects
Agriculture and Rural Development
Agriculture and Rural Development
Research, design and
development area
Partner: Associazione Nazionale Città dell'Olio

The Associazione Nazionale Città dell’Olio (ANCO) has established a Research, Design and Development Area in collaboration with the "scientia Atque usus" Research Center for Generative Communication. Thanks to this new Area, ANCO intends to offer its members support in identifying competitive tenders, assistance in drafting projects and in establishing partnerships at a local, regional, national and international level.

New EVO. The value of olive growing
for the sustainable development of territories
Partner: Associazione Nazionale Città dell'Olio

The project aims to redefine the value of oil and olive growing in Italy, helping to implement policies to support and develop the sector capable of making it a central element in the sustainable development trajectories of our country.
The project aims also to create a community of stakeholders - public entities, institutions, citizens, producers, restaurateurs, etc. - who daily work to enhance and communicate oil and olive growing as a heritage capable of generating value for the territories.

Culture and Society
Culture and Society
Viareggio Futura
A Model of a "Healthy Territory"
Partner: Comune di Viareggio, local stakeholders

Viareggio Futura. A Model of a "Healthy Territory" is a participatory action research project conducted according to the paradigm of Generative Communication, with the progressive involvement of local stakeholders.

The goal is to collaboratively build a sustainable and enduring development model for the City of Viareggio, bringing to light the distinctive features and values that form the city's deep-rooted identity, to meaningfully redefine the urban and territorial development model on which Viareggio and its surroundings are based.

The project, therefore, aims to develop Viareggio as a model of a Healthy Territory, which, grounded in the distinctive traits recognized by all stakeholders, does not fragment or isolate itself in the defense of specific ideals and values. Instead, it generates new relationships, both internally and externally, expanding to encompass an even broader territory.

PLURAL – Public Libraries Undertaking
geneRAtive vaLues
Partner: Comune di Firenze, The Democratic Society, Espoo city, Gent city, Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC), Eurocities, Public Libraries 2030, Gent University and LAMA

This RIA Horizon project involves testing acritivies in three pilot areas (Florence, Gent and Espoo) to define innovative ways of communicating and offering services accessible through municipal libraries, with a focus on the culture of sustainability, inclusion and conservation of intangible cultural heritage. The aim of the project is to strengthen the mediation role of libraries between the needs of citizens and the services they can access, accelerating their transformation from places of conservation of knowledge to engines of social innovation and community reference.

Generative Documentation Center to enhance
the audio-video contents of social research

The project aims to activate a Generative Documentation Center to enhance the knowledge that has been collected through the ministerial project PRIN - "Migrant children's participation and identity construction in education and healthcare", with possible extensions to other social research projects.

The aim of the project is to build an archive of active documentation, which is functional for archiving, cataloging and recalling the results of the research carried out, and - above all - for   designing and implementing training objects aimed at schools (but also at other stakeholders in the sector), to involve managers, teachers and other stakeholders as co-authors of the tools they may actually need to address the difficulties associated with multiculturalism in the school.

Health and Healthcare

Health and Healthcare

San Casciano in Val di Pesa
What E-Health for a “Healthy Territory”?
Partner: Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di San Casciano in Val di Pesa, Fondazione CR Firenze

The sAu Research Center has initiated a participatory action research project to develop a prototype of participatory design for a “human-touch” E-Health system starting from the San Casciano in Val di Pesa Territory (near Florence, Italy), actively involving both the citizens and healthcare professionals.

The experiment began in the municipality of San Casciano in Val di Pesa, with the analysis and enhancement of communication and the provision of social and healthcare services to the local population.

Through this action research on this Territory, we aim to create and strengthen a communication system that, while addressing and resolving the many issues encountered by the public in accessing the available social and healthcare services, places both the citizens and healthcare system operators in the best possible position to receive and deliver the required services.

The tool at the heart of this action research is a network of “SOS Communication in Health” desks, designed to help identify and meet communication needs within the medical and healthcare fields.

“SOS Communication in Health” desks
Partner: Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di San Casciano in Val di Pesa
sAu Research Center proposes creating a prototype of the “SOS Health Communication” through a co-design process with Misericordia of San Casciano in Val di Pesa (a small city near Florence, Italy). Misericordia is a historic Italian charitable organization, primarily volunteer-based, dedicated to providing social assistance, emergency medical services, and community support, especially in healthcare. The project starts with an analysis of the current communication system related to the services provided. This will immediately involve both the personnel working for Misericordia and the target audiences. The “SOS Health Communication” Desk is: • a tool offered to users to resolve communication issues; • an observatory for identifying communication difficulties that emerge from interactions with various partner organizations. The desk will achieve three objectives: • provide concrete responses to users' needs; • create a system for identifying and analyzing recurring communication issues faced by users; • develop short- and long-term improvement actions, starting with existing communication tools and content. The co-design process of the desk serves as a tool for listening to the needs of both those who access services from various organizations and those working within them. It will be developed in synergy and collaboration with public relations staff: secretarial offices, front offices, call centers, etc.
Gender Health and Medicine.
A Generative Communication strategy
for personalized care and equity

The research project starts from the collection and documentation of scientific evidence in the field of Gender Health Medicine, through the involvement of experts in the fields of oncology, cardiovascular diseases, nutrition etc and the publication of dissemination contents - with a book and an online ecosystem -  and a targeted communication plan to make knowledge accessible.  Our aim is to develop a strategy of Generative Communication - through a community-based participatory approach - to make stakeholders aware of gender differences through several approaches: by stimulating the pre-clinical and clinical, by improving or establishing training courses within the major medical specializations, at all the relevant educational levels and involving the population in general.

Master in Medical-Scientific and
Health Services Communication

In 2019, Luca Toschi and his research group established a Master in Medical-Scientific Communication and Health Services. The Master is directed by a scientific committee based at the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine with primary doctors of the University Hospital of Careggi in Florence. The Master has activated numerous partnerships on the territory: associations, organizations and companies in the health sector.

Sport that Generates Health.
A New Information Tool for Citizenship
Partner: Città Metropolitana di Firenze

The project aims to study the communication model adopted by the institutions - at international, national and regional level - to promote physical activity as primary health prevention. The ultimate goal is to use the Generative Communication and its technique to create an awareness and communication campaign through the creation of an app in which the health needs of users converge with scientific information from industry experts.

Who is Afraid of Childbirth.
Analyzing the Social Dimension of Motherhood
Partner: Dipartimento Materno-Infantile, AOU Careggi

The project - carried out in collaboration with Professor Felice Petraglia, director of the Department of Gynecology of the Careggi University Hospital - aims to bring out the social dimension of motherhood through listening, identification, collection and analysis of the fears that characterize the imagination of pregnant women.

Technologies to Enhance the Human Touch
Technologies to Enhance the Human Touch
Don Lorenzo Milani Generative Center
Partner: Fondazione CR Firenze, Fondazione don Lorenzo Milani

The “Don Lorenzo Milani Generative Center” is a project that the sAu Research Center is developing through its own “Atque” Design and Communication System on the occasion of the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of don Lorenzo Milani, prior of Barbiana (27 May 1923 – 27 May 2023). 

With this project, the sAu Research Center is building an integrated system that collects and documents photos, videos, resources, experiences that update the thought and work of don Milani, to encourage the creation of a community - composed of schools, institutions, associations and many other stakeholders - committed to reflecting on social, cultural and religious issues inspired by the teaching of Don Milani with the aim of overcoming the current critical issues related to communication, inclusion and hospitality.

School and digital culture:
let's start from don Milani!
Partner: Fondazione CR Firenze, Fondazione don Lorenzo Milani

On the occasion of the events organized for the centenary of the birth of the prior of Barbiana (2023) and as a starting point for the don Lorenzo Milani Generative Center project, sAu Research Center offers schools the opportunity to design and develop educational and communicative objects, that actualize the themes dear to don Milani.

The Generative Communication and its Technique since 1991

Generative Communication is a technique to create communities of values, interests and objectives that cooperate for the development of products/services. 

Generative Communication, conceived by Professor Luca Toschi, by its inclusive and participatory nature, promotes collaboration and coordination between the world of research (scientia) and the world of work, institutions, citizens (usus) and propose the implementation of innovative products – ensuring the active role of the communities – in response to problems with a strong economic, social and cultural impact and to the dis-integration of specialisms and non-communicating sectors.

The solutions proposed through the use of the Generative Communication are characterized by an idea of innovation that, starting from specific aspects, becomes the driving force that leads to systemic and non-sectoral innovation processes.

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Our Design and Communication System

The “Atque” Design and Communication System is an integrated system of tools intended to facilitate the cooperation among stakeholders in order to encourage and constantly expand communities of interests around a project. It is also designed to communicate the results achieved by the project through a precise strategy of content publishing that can be useful for expanding communities outside the project.
The Integrated System Atque aims to facilitate both the internal communication, the stakeholder engagement and training activities, the implementation of the networking/dissemination.

Our Design and Communication System is a suite composed of:

Officine

It is a place where sAu community carries out design, development, management and monitoring activities for projects based on Generative Communication.  It strengthens collaboration and cooperation between all stakeholders involved.

Library
It organizes and makes available the knowledge that feeds the Projects: reports, qualitative and quantitative analysis, but also the best innovative practices of Generative Communication. It systematizes the collected data to enhance them as elements of knowledge functional to their reuse in different contexts.
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It collects and organizes relationships and contacts and implements targeted communication and community building strategies.
Matrix allows you to enter and update the personal data of subjects and to monitor the status of contacts of people and organizations involved in a project.
Academy
It is the training center of sAu Research Center that proposes object-oriented activities. It responds to specific needs that emerge from Projects: from the training reserved to the personnel of organizations, institutions, foundations and  associations to initiatives addressed to stakeholders to give them a role in the project activities.

It is a place where sAu community carries out design, development, management and monitoring activities for projects based on Generative Communication.  It strengthens collaboration and cooperation between all stakeholders involved.

It organizes and makes available the knowledge that feeds the projects: reports, qualitative and quantitative analysis, but also the best innovative practices of Generative Communication. It systematizes the collected data to enhance them as elements of knowledge functional to their reuse in different contexts.
It collects and organizes relationships and contacts and implements targeted communication and community building strategies. Matrix allows you to enter and update the personal data of subjects and to monitor the status of contacts of people and organizations involved in a project.

It is the training center of sAu Research Center that proposes object-oriented activities.
It responds to specific needs that emerge within the Projects carried out by sAu community: from the training reserved to the personnel of organizations, institutions, foundations and  associations to initiatives addressed to stakeholders to give them a role in the project activities.

More information (download Atque presentation)

Editorial and Informative Activities as Tools for Community Building

Thanks to the “Atque” Design and Communication System, the editorial and informative activities of the sAu Research Center are connected to action research projects, aiming to expand and strengthen the sAu community

sAu Community Series

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The editorial series of the sAu Research Center realize publications – books and online contents – to create communities of values, goals, and projects

sAu Journal

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The journal of the sAu Research Center publishes Articles, Reviews, Notes, Generative Introductions, and Project Chronicles

Academy

Academy

The consulting and training environment  shared with partners

About Us
Many disciplines, knowledge, experiences, competences converge in the projects of sAu Research Center: for this reason the activities involve researchers, but also professionals, of different origins and very articulated scientific-professional backgrounds.
This allows sAu Research Center to offer its partners tools for analysis, design, development and communication monitoring capable of responding – immediately – to the most specific and diversified needs.
Luca-Toschi

Luca Toschi

Founder and President of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Director of Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence and Generative Communication Lab

Full Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes, University of Florence.

Alessandra-Anichini
Alessandra Anichini

Co-founding member of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Researcher at INDIRE – National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research
Viola-Davini

Viola Davini

Co-founding member and Association Secretary of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Ph.D.

Research fellow at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Marta-guarducci profilo

Marta Guarducci

Member of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Research assistant at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.
Eugenio-Pandolfini
Eugenio Pandolfini

Co-founding member and Association Treasurer of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Ph.D.

Researcher at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Marco-Sbardella
Marco Sbardella

Co-founding member of scientia Atque usus Research Center

Ph.D.

Research fellow at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Do you Want to Know More about our Research Center?

Contact us!
Write to viola.davini@sau-centroricerche.org