Domenico De Masi
Domenico De Masi (1 February 1938 – 9 September 2023) was an Italian sociologist. He was professor emeritus of sociology of work at the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", where he also was head of the Faculty of Communication Sciences. As a scholar, teacher, researcher and consultant his interest was in the sociology of work and organisations, post-industrial society, development and underdevelopment, urban systems, creativity, free time, methods and techniques of social research with particular regard to forecasting investigations. Life De Masi was born in Rotello, in 1938. He attended the liceo classico secondary school at Caserta and then moved to Perugia for his university studies, where he graduated in Law in 1960 with a thesis on the history of law. He specialised in sociology of work in Paris. In Naples, he began his university career as an assistant in sociology at the Federico II University. At the same time, he was also a researcher at the 'Nord e Sud' study centre directed by Giuseppe Galasso, where he carried out research on informal groups and trade unions at the Italsider plant in Bagnoli (Naples). During this period, he also collaborated with the magazine 'Nord e Sud' directed by Francesco Compagna. De Masi moved to Milan, where he worked until 1966 for the CMF company of the IRI-Finsider group, taking care of selection and training and coordinating the delivery of two new plants in Dalmine and Livorno. For this, CMF won the European Community award for the best organisational operation of the year. In Milan, he collaborated in the founding of the Associazione Italiana Formatori (AIF), of which he later became president. and directed the magazine “FOR”. In 1966 he moved to Rome to work as a lecturer and consultant in the Sociology of Labour at IFAP, the Iri Centre for the Study of Corporate Management Functions, chaired first by Giuseppe Glisenti, then by Pasquale Saraceno. From 1966 to 1979 he was lecturer in Industrial Sociology and then manager at IFAP. From 1961 he taught: initially as an assistant professor of general sociology at the University of Naples Federico II, then (1968) as a professor of labour sociology at the University of Sassari, then as a professor of general sociology from 1971 to 1973 at the University of Naples "L'Orientale", from 1974 to 1977 as a professor of Social Research Methods and Techniques again at Federico II and finally, from 1977, at "La Sapienza" in Rome, where he had held various posts, including President of the Faculty of Communication Sciences. From 1978 to 2000, he founded and directed the S3.Studium, a three-year postgraduate specialisation school in organisational sciences, to make up for the shortage of university master's degrees. The school, a non-profit organisation, trains postgraduates and participates in the debate on the sociology of work and related organisations in Italy through seminars, conferences, meetings, exhibitions, magazines and collective books. When, in 2000, university regulations instituted university master's degrees, he organised the 'Master's degree in Communication and Organisation' at the