Italy’s History of Education: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach

In December 2019, scholars belonging to various disciplines – economic history, history of education and economics – met at the University of Rome Tor Vergata for a two-day meeting on the theme Education and economic development: an interdisciplinary workshop on the history of education in Italy. The year 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Carlo M. Cipolla’s Literacy and Development in the West (1969), a pioneering contribution that stimulated the debate on the interdependence between education, human capital and economic development. The present special issue on Literacy and Development aims at favouring a reduction of the gap between disciplines that, despite relying on different methodologies and perspectives, often deal with similar research questions.