PhD student of the month
November 2024: Francesco Pipicella
Meet the doctoral candidates at the Law Faculty in a series of interviews. Francesco Pipicella, doctoral candidate in constitutional law, is presented in the November portrait.
Francesco Pipicella is one year into his doctoral studies. With an Italian law degree and a Swiss master thesis in his backpack, he has moved to Uppsala to pursue a degree of doctor of laws. His thesis, with the title The role of multinational corporations in strengthening constitutionalism in fragile contexts, is a joint project with the Department of Law and the Department of Business Studies.
- On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I’m at the Business Department. Those days I go to the gym at Ekonomikum. There is also a sauna! Tuesdays and Thursdays I am at the Law Faculty.
Francesco has always been interested in an academic career. At the University of Geneva, he did a master in human rights law and won a prize for the best master’s paper in 2022. The title was The Corporate Social Responsibility to Strengthen State Institutions in Post-Conflict Environments.
Francesco Pipicella Foto: Francesco Pipicella
- It combined human rights and business and applied a different perspective on how corporations can contribute and be helpful, not only how corporations are held accountable for the harm they sometimes impose on society.
Out of the master’s paper, Francesco formed an application for doctoral positions. It was hard, however, to find suitable positions to apply for.
- It seemed that my project had too much business for positions in human rights law, and too much human rights law for business law positions!
This cross-disciplinary perspective seems to engage Francesco very much, and we talk about how perfect it is for him to be part of the Department of Law as well as the Business Studies Department.
- When Martin (Berglund, former Director of Research) called me and let me know I got the joint research position in Uppsala I was super, super happy. I directly accepted, even though I was completely ignorant about Uppsala and actually had to check on the map where it was.
Last September, he arrived and started as a doctoral candidate in constitutional law. The work ahead is going to be finalized in a compilation thesis. Francesco has already worked on a first article which he aims to submit by the end of the year. He has also taken research courses, done some teaching and presented his research at an internal conference at Ekonomikum. A lot, it seems, in only one year. I ask him if he has not heard of the well-established principle among doctoral candidates of “warming up the chair” the first year.
- Well, I feel that I have had a lot of time thinking about the project, reading and interacting with people. I feel that it is now at the second year that I actually can start to work. I think you need that first year, though, even if you can’t present anything concrete. I am more relaxed now to talk about my topic.
Talking about talking… How has Uppsala and Sweden treated him, I wonder? Swedes are known for some things, and extensive talking to strangers is not one of them.
- Yeah, there is this stereotype in Italy about Swedes, but I have only experienced friendly people. May be sometimes people are a little shy, but once you start to talk everyone is nice and you also adapt to speaking English everywhere.
- I won the lottery. I really like Uppsala, I can see my future here. My dream would be to get a stable job in academia.
Thank you, Francesco, for sharing a coffee and your experiences from your first year in Uppsala. Best of luck for the years ahead!
Fågelsången, 2024-10-17
Rebecca Söderström