Reset DOC

November

2026

International Mariapolis Centre Castel Gandolfo, Rome

In a period marked by geopolitical fragmentation, declining development assistance, and growing uncertainty about the future of global cooperation, what role can religions play in shaping new models of development and peacebuilding? How can multireligious collaborations and integral human development help to shape the future of global partnerships to build more peaceful and flourishing societies?

June

2026

University of Milano-Bicocca

This conference critically engages with Seyla Benhabib’s book “At the Margins of the Modern State. Critical Theory and Law,” interrogating tensions between universalism and exclusion in contemporary political and legal orders. Can democracy be normatively and institutionally reconstructed in an age of polycrisis, fractured sovereignty, and the transformation of the public sphere? Under what conditions is democracy still possible today? These are central questions that will be at the core of the two-day debate.

May

2026

Venice International University

The Seminars will explore the relationship between civic virtue, character formation, and public ethics at a moment when liberal democracies face growing pressure from autocratic forces. They will consider how virtuous leaders and communities emerge, which social mechanisms foster ethical behavior, and how religious and secular traditions shape character.

Analyses

For decades, Latin America’s authoritarian regimes were seen as a right-wing phenomenon, with Cuba as the lone exception — a dictatorship born not from a betrayal of democracy, but of revolution. As Washington’s embargo returns to the headlines, this piece asks what that framing has long obscured: that Cuba has never had just one embargo, but two.

Publications

Contemporary democracies face an era of mounting pressure: authoritarian drift, digital disruption, a crisis of representation, and eroding trust in institutions. This is not a passing downturn but a structural transformation threatening the foundations of democratic governance. Born out of the 2025 Venice Seminars, this volume asks a defining question: can democracy’s malaise be addressed within the liberal paradigm, or does it demand a more radical rethinking? Its contributors examine the resources of political liberalism alongside post-liberal alternatives grounded in community, ethics, and political order. The debate remains open — and essential.

Our Initiatives

The Dublin Seminars, in partnership with Boston College Ireland and Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, have kicked out in 2023 to establish as a remarkable cultural appointment, able to promote and consolidate a network of cultural, intellectual and academic relationships among senior and junior scholars in the social sciences, political theory, sociology, legal and religious studies. Thanks to its cross-cultural inspiration, the Dublin Seminars function as an original think tank for a thorough understanding of the challenges facing democracy, politics and international relations in the 21st-century world.

The project “Theologies and practices of religious pluralism” investigates current debates and issues on pluralism within and across religious traditions and how some of these debates are reshaping the status of religion in different public spaces. These adaptations have a profound impact on international relations and daily life in every society, across cultural, ethnic, racial divides. This project is jointly promoted by Reset DOC (Italy), Reset Dialogues (US) the University of Birmingham (UK), the Berkeley Center at Georgetown University (US), the Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna and Palermo (Italy) and the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies (Israel).

Illiberal trend

Riccardo Cristiano interviews for Reset DOC political scientist Cengiz Aktar on the Turkish nationalist-authoritarian shift. A 360 degrees picture of Turkish society and its relationship with politics, religion and the Kurdish question.