
Our Research Center
The Research Center sees in the complexity of society an immense wealth of resources and recognizes in the fragmentation of knowledge and skills that characterize this particular historical moment the main obstacle to scientific, civic and social progress.




































Only given the centrality of this human touch, both in the identification phase of needs – social, cultural, economic and political – and in the design and implementation of the related tools, the contribution of machines, and of every mechanism aimed to automation, can be considered fundamental and essential.
The Research Center has been working for years on medical-scientific communication and health services to encourage health literacy among all citizens and synergies between experts, institutions, health companies and third sector associations. It is overt, the need to define a new communication pact between all stakeholders who intend to cooperate for the realization of a new idea of health and healthcare.
Our projects are based on a community building strategy aimed at rethinking and redefining the role and resources of the various subjects involved, with a strong focus on the network of stakeholders, in the belief that the working table must be radically rewritten.
A new culture of research
We believe that it is more urgent than ever to defend the autonomy of the world of research (scientia), and its authority and credibility, redefining the relationship on the one hand with the values that inspire it, or would like to inspire it, and on the other with the complex world of daily living acts of citizens and citizens (usus).
It is necessary to rethink the places and tools of scientific research, as well as the profiles of researchers and organizations themselves, in an anthropological scenario that sees the entire planet transforming into a huge potentials laboratory.
The Third Sector Entities engaged in research activities can play an essential role in orienting public and private research institutions towards a different relationship with the world of use.
A society in which everyone can exercise the right to live his/her daily lives – at work, in family, in community – as a continuous research activity, in order to know, enrich and improve the quality lives on an individual and collective level.
Never as today is Socrates’ statement true: “Life without research is not worth living” (Apology).
Knowledge and culture are the most important renewable resources, whose mutuality is a necessary condition for a sustainable society.
This situation is answered by supporting a communication that wants to recognize and enhance, in actions of daily sustainability, the infinite resources, currently ignored and humiliated, present in a complex society such as ours.
The Research Center proposes a survey on the perception that health professionals and patients have of the most advanced robotic technologies.
To what extent can a robot replace a surgeon in the operating room?
What are the fears and expectations of patients who will be subjected to interventions that involve an important contribution from robots?
The Research Center is working on the development of solutions for the management and analysis of funds and archives that aim to promote the sharing of contents, the debate and the creativity of people involved, facilitating the creation of project communities.
The Research Center - in collaboration with Fondazione Don Lorenzo Milani and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze - is developing a Documentation Center to support cultural projects with schools and other stakeholders to revitalize the experience of Don Lorenzo Milani. The results will be published for the Don Lorenzo Milani's centenary.
The Center for Generative Communication - in collaboration with the Operative Structure of Andrology, Female Endocrinology and Gender Incongruence of the Careggi University Hospital (Florence, Italy) - proposes a project to promote a different listening culture for medical students and to build a training course on communication with the patients.
The project aims to analyze whether and how data, information and knowledge that emerge from the activity of the ISPRO Cancer Listening Center of the Tuscan Region can contribute to design and develop a new and innovative communication between citizens and the Regional Health System.
The project investigates the constitutive values of healthcare in Tuscany, to imagine a new way of evaluating and, therefore, communicating its vision and mission.
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 Paradigm 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.
For years, the Research Center has been involved in implementing communication strategies to strengthen the level of patient involvement in the field of healthcare and health. The project aims to identify partners to initiate shared analysis and evaluation processes of listening and communication actions - that are active in the partners’ organizations - with the aim of strengthening these services.
The CMSSS Master - in collaboration with the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine and Careggi University Hospital (Florence, Italy) - is intended as a consultative training course. Thanks to the board of professors - researchers, doctors and experts of international level - the Master trains communication professionals who already operate - or would like to operate - in organizations that are interested in carrying out Generative Communication projects. Here are some of the projects that Master students are carrying out in the current edition:
- Communication in Maxi-Emergencies: a Model Hypothesis for Hospitals
- Pro-active Public Relations Office
- Prevention and Management of the Nutritional Risk for Surgical Patient
- Let’s Help the First Aid! How to Help Us Help You
Please find below some of the projects of the second edition of the CMSSS Master, in collaboration with the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine and Careggi University Hospital (Florence, Italy):
- For Two-Way Communication. The Digital Strategy of the Milan Polyclinic
- Community Building for Digitization in the Long-Term Care Sector
- The Renaissance of the Territorial Pharmacist Through Telemedicine Services
Please find below some of the projects of the second edition of the CMSSS Master, in collaboration with the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine and Careggi University Hospital (Florence, Italy):
- Telemedicine and Remote Consultations: the Absence of Physical Proximity to Redefine the Communication Between Doctor and Patient
- Palliative Care in the Rare and Cancer Patient
- Listening to Improve Oncology Services. The Tuscan Listening Networks in the Covid 19 Emergency
- Covid-19 and Crisis Communication. A Professional Training Project for Journalists
This 2 years project, in collaboration with the “Istituto per lo Studio, la Prevenzione e la Rete Oncologica” (ISPRO), Agenzia Regionale di Sanità (ARS) Toscana, and the University of Florence won the 2018 Call of Regione Toscana for Health Research. It aims to create a Tuscan regional system dedicated to the surveillance and monitoring of the incidence of childhood and adolescent cancers in relation to specific environmental risk factors.
The project involves the application of the paradigm of Generative Communication in the active involvement of citizens for the definition of communication and awareness campaigns.
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.
scientia Atque usus is the place where many voices – different in terms of knowledge, skills, abilities, professionalism, social roles, but united by precise ethical choices – share and discuss a new culture of communication.
Our Ecosystem of Tools favor maximum collaboration and cooperation between the world of research – scientia – and the infinite social, economic, cultural activities – the world of usus.
For each project the Research Center implements tools for the conception, development, management and monitoring (sAu Officine), for the sharing of the results obtained (sAu Quaderni), for the content management and publishing (sAu Library).


It is the newspaper of the Research Center, the periodical in which articles of various kinds deal with the issues that emerged from the activities developed within the projects.

It collects, communicates and makes available the documentation and knowledge that feeds the projects carried out by sAu community.
It is not a decontextualized archive of resources: each content of the Library is associated with one or more research areas and at least one project of the Research Center.


Luca Toschi
Director of Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence and of Lab Center for Generative Communication of PIN – University Center (Prato).
Full Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes, University of Florence.

Lisa Capitini
Ph.D. candidate in the program in Sustainable Management of Agricultural, Forestry and Food Resources at the Department of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry of University of Florence.

Viola Davini
Ph.D.
Research fellow at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Alfonso Musci
Ph.D.
Research fellow at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

Ph.D.
Researcher at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.

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

Ph.D.
Research fellow at Center for Generative Communication of University of Florence.
Contact us!
Write to viola.davini@sau-centroricerche.org