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The aim of this article is to explore the autonomist press in the Corsican language through topic modelling. In order to do so, the effectiveness of two topic modelling methods, LDA and LSA, will be compared on a trilingual corpus - Italian, Croatian and French - not subject to lemmatization, not only in order to assess the results obtained, but also to understand which of these methods comes closest to our previous knowledge on the subject, which is the result of a close reading.

The pace of digitized collective knowledge accumulation has become increasingly rapid in the last few years. That means we have tremendous amounts of information content to be organized, searched, and understood that can be arranged only by employing automatic methods. In the case of textual data analysis, topic modeling, a machine learning method, is definitely the most famous framework to uncover latent topics from text documents. Adopting topic modeling approaches for studying textual sources is a well-established practice in many scientific and humanities studies fields, including the historical research scope. In this paper, we present a benchmark corpus for topic models, a dataset containing an annotated real-world collection of texts focused on the antisemitism theme in 19th century France. The benchmark corpus has been developed to address a specific machine learning task but it can also support the enhancement of other natural language processing-based studies, in particular, those concerning the historical sphere.

The image of North-Eastern Europe appears composite and complex. While its geographical conglomeration is cut across by the Baltic Sea, it is not a coherent area at a cultural and political level. Yet, the numerous investments made by local and international actors in attempting to define this space call for a closer scrutiny of the processes of imagining and re-imagining spaces.

Citizen science (CS), "citizen science" or "participatory science", refers to the participation and active involvement of citizens in scientific research activities. While CS includes natural sciences, such as biology, chemistry and physics, and citizen social science deals with societies, citizen humanities apply to historical, literary, linguistic and philosophical disciplines. Digital public history, due to its public, participatory and collaborative vocation in a digital context, presents itself as one of the privileged fields of application of citizen humanities. The added value of citizen humanities depends primarily on two conditions underlying the digital public history: the participation of historians who do not come from the academy in the creation of collaborative projects and the communication of the results of historical research to the public on the network. The article intends to reflect on how collaborative writing, made possible by wiki tools, can be an excellent starting point for a participatory democracy that is located in the wake of citizen humanities.

Abstract Lying in the Baltic sea, at the entrance of the Gulf of Bothnia, 70km from the Finnish coast and 36 km from that of Sweden, the archipelago of Åland is an autonomous Finnish province. What distinguishes the archipelago is its Swedish monolingualism, autonomous government recognized by international treaties, and demilitarization. This article proposes some reflections on the concept of sovereignty in Åland in the 20th century particularly on two key elements the island’s strategic position and its autonomy. After a historical overview of Åland in the 1800s, emphasizing their strategic relevance in the Baltic, I will focus on the irredentist period, in which emerged secessionist movement that called for the island’s anexation to Sweden.

RÉSUMÉ Cet article vise à réflechir sur le rôle joué par les consuls italiens dans la transmission de la propagande fasciste en Corse et à Malte. Il s’agit essentiellement de se questionner sur la communication politique établie entre le gouvernement fasciste et les consuls en poste dans les deux îles, en se penchant tout spécialement sur le rôle joué par ces consuls en tant qu’agents d’information.

Is it really possible to make an histoire du temps présent by analyzing an event like a global pandemic? What tools should the historian use to investigate the phenomena related to the spread of Covid-19? In a similar context, what is the role of the public historian? The historians Enrica Salvatori (Pisa), Alessandro Casellato (Venice), Roberto Bianchi (Florence) have tried to answer these questions.

For months the discussion on schools and universities has concerned technical and organizational issues, yet nowadays the freedom of teaching is such only if educators are aware of the existence of various distance learning formats. Last May, Marco Soresina (Milan), Marcello Ravveduto (Salerno) and Albertina Vittoria (Sassari) talked about their respective didactic experiences during the lockdown, expressing opposite opinions on the lessons to be learned for the future. Beyond the social importance of distance learning, reflections emerge on the meaning of the teacher’s activity, on the conception of the lesson as a discursive process that calls into play both teacher and learner, and on the underestimation of some aspects — social isolation, copyright etc. — which should instead be brought to the fore in the debate.

La fin de la guerre froide a créé de nouvelles possibilités de coopération entre les îles de la région baltique. La notion de région en tant que lieu de réseaux et de processus sociaux, politiques et économiques est au cœur de l’agenda politique des pays riverains de la Baltique. Cet article porte sur la rhétorique du «brand baltique», c’est-à-dire une façon particulière de faire des choses qui est devenu le symbole d’un nouveau récit des intérêts économiques et politiques communs et des caractéristiques culturelles communes dans la région baltique aussi bien qu’un facteur de region-building.

This review of the websites related to the main Centres for research on Baltic Sea Region aims at providing an overview of the activities undertaken by experts and scholars who share an interest in the evolving relationship between the European Union and the countries bordering on the Baltic Sea. Special attention is paid to joint activities, including the launch of academic conference, the organisation of workshops and postgraduate programs.

Issue’s preface.

The notion of “inner boundary” is the key point in understanding the internal dynamics of independence and autonomy movements that have made ​​their appearance in Corsica and Sicily during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The comparative-historical dimension allows to dispel the stereotype of the insular particularism and the cultural specificity.

Abstract Background We explored whether number of languages spoken and language proficiency are associated with cognitive performance among older adults living in the community and in long-term care (LTC) in Switzerland. Methods Among study participants, 664 lived in the community in the Canton of Zurich (Mean age = 72.97 years; SD = 6.08), 386 lived in the community in Ticino (Mean age = 76.24 years; SD = 6.66), and 176 resided in LTC in Ticino (Mean age = 87.61 years; SD = 6.45). We recorded sociodemographic variables, number of languages spoken, language proficiency, and assessed overall cognitive performance, immediate and delayed memory, and verbal fluency with standardized tests. We used adjusted regression models. Results A higher number of spoken languages was positively associated with overall cognitive performance, verbal fluency and immediate and delayed memory performance in community-dwelling older adults in the Cantons of Ticino and Zurich, (all p values ≤ 0.012;), but not in in older adults living in LTC homes (all p values ≥ 0.35). Higher language proficiency was associated with better memory performance among individuals living in the community in Ticino (p value = 0.003), and to better performance in verbal fluency and memory tasks in Zurich (p values ≤ 0.002). Among LTC residents, proficiency levels were not associated with cognitive performance. Conclusions Multilingualism and greater language proficiency were associated with better cognitive functioning in community-dwelling but not in institutionalized older adults. Multilingualism may contribute to cognitive reserve, as well as protect and delay cognitive decline in late life.

Background: COVID-19 patients can report ‘brain fog’ and may exhibit cognitive symptoms for months after recovery (Cognitive COVID). However, evidence on whether and the extent to which SARS-CoV-2 infection impacts cognition irrespective of COVID-19 course and severity is limited to clinical samples and mainly comes from prognostic studies. We aimed to explore the association between serologically confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and cognitive functioning in community-based and institutionalized older adults, irrespective of COVID-19 symptoms. Methods: We conducted a case-control study nested into two cohorts in Southern Switzerland. Eligible subjects were Italian speaking older adults, without a previous diagnosis of dementia, who underwent serological testing for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies between November 2020 and July 2021. We manually selected age-, sex- and education-matched cases (i.e., individuals with a serologically confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection), with seronegative controls, and we conducted in-person neuropsychological assessments using validated, highly sensitive cognitive tests. Results: We completed 38 neuropsychological assessments in a mostly female sample of older adults (Mean age: 83.13 ± 8.95; 86.8% women). 17 were community dwelling individuals while 21 lived in a nursing home. As expected, socio-demographic characteristics of age, gender and educational level were similarly distributed between cases (n = 14) and controls (n = 24). In linear regression models, cases had significantly lower scores in cognitive tasks of memory (β = −0.367, p = 0.023), attention (β = 0.428, p = 0.008) and executive functions (β = 0.326, p = 0.046). We found no significant difference in tests of language and spatial-temporal orientation (all p values > 0.05). Conclusions: SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with cognitive impairment in memory, attention, and executive functions in older adults. Our findings are consistent with mechanistic evidence of the neurotropism of the virus and provide empirical support for the “Cognitive COVID” construct also in non-clinical samples. With nearly 800 million COVID-19 cases (in April 2023), and many more infections worldwide, the clinical and public health implications of Cognitive COVID due to SARS-CoV-2 infection may be massive and warrant further epidemiological investigations.

Abstract Background Increasing public awareness and understanding of dementia is the second key action area of the 2017 WHO Global action plan on a public health response to dementia. To achieve this aim, the first indispensable step is to understand the average level of dementia knowledge and to identify areas of low dementia knowledge. We aimed to quantify dementia knowledge in the general population, and to explore the extent to which it differs by age, sex, education, and indirect experience with dementia. Methods We conducted an online cross-sectional survey in two Italian-speaking sites, south Switzerland (Ticino) and northern Italy (Piedmont). The survey was distributed between September and December 2019. We registered socio-demographic characteristics including whether the participant had contact with a person living with dementia, and measured dementia knowledge with the Dementia Knowledge Assessment Survey (DKAS). Results Misconceptions about dementia were common among respondents, and lack of knowledge has been identified in dementia causes, characteristics, risk factors, and health promotion. Our results point out the lack of knowledge about how to communicate and relate with, and take care of a person living with dementia. The overall DKAS score was significantly and positively associated with female sex (β = 0.21; p