Emanuela Ceva is Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Geneva, where she is also a member of the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences. She specializes in political philosophy, with a particular interest in institutional theory as concerns issues of justice, democracy, corruption, trust, and the political role of moral emotions.  She has held visiting fellowships, among others, at the universities of Oxford, St. Andrews, Montréal, Hitotsubashi (Tokyo), KU Leuven, and Harvard. In 2018, she received a Fulbright Scholarship in philosophy. She has published articles in such journals as the Journal of Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy & Policy, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Philosophy Compass. Her most recent book (co-authored with Maria Paola Ferretti) is Political Corruption. The Internal Enemy of Public Institutions (Oxford University Press).

She is the Principal Investigator of the EnTrust project. Her research will be mainly aimed at pinpointing the endogenous constitutive relation between institutional functioning and the trustworthiness inherent to the dynamics of officeholders’ interaction. In particular, her research will draw attention to the import for the assessment of institutional functioning of the practical role of the officeholders’ emotional reactions to a lack of endogenous institutional trustworthiness. This emotional capital is studied as an internal resource to sustain institutional functioning by responding to threats against cooperative interactions. More information.

Michele Bocchiola is Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Geneva. Previously, he held research positions at the University of Pavia, Luiss University of Rome, and the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), where he also taught ethics and political philosophy. His researches interests include contemporary political philosophy and applied ethics. His publications include essays on the ethics of whistleblowing, the work of J. Rawls and G.A. Cohen, the problem of cultural diversity in Western societies, the moral and political foundations of privacy. These works have been the object of publications in such journals as Journal of Political Philosophy, Philosophy Compass, The Journal of Value Inquiry, and a co-authored book on Is Whistleblowing a Duty? (Polity).

In cooperation with the PI, Michele Bocchiola will study how the internal emotional capital of an institution can be mobilized to activate an institution’s capacity of self-correction, starting from the current strategies put in place to address deficits of office accountability (e.g. political corruption, nepotism, regulatory capture, or negligence), thus enhancing endogenous institutional trustworthiness. More information.