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My aim is to create something that will add knowledge and will put forward new questions.

The first graduate of the Liberal Arts curricula in Social Sciences, Sara Anna Nadalini from Italy, talks about what impressed her about the programme, her future plans, and what she likes most about Tallinn.

You graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts in Social Sciences this January. Why did you decide to choose this field of study? 

I began my studies in my home country, in Italy. I was studying Political Science but I was not very motivated and engaged with my courses there. It took me a few years to understand that the field I had chosen was not meant for me. I went to Tallinn on an Erasmus programme while I was still a student in Bologna, and while I was there I understood that I needed a change in order to find passion and inspiration. Tallinn is a small, cozy capital where one can really get in touch with the inner part of oneself and think thoroughly about one’s life. I thought about the possibility of coming back to continue my studies in Political Science in the Politics and Government Department of the university. I discussed with the Erasmus coordinator, at the time Merje Kuusk, and she suggested me to take a look at other courses too, especially one that was about to be launched for the first academic year. I researched the Catherine’s College’s course offers and remained positively impressed by the Liberal Arts course that gives students a possibility to choose among a wide range of subjects that vary greatly from one another. Also the credits for the electives are quite many and I found this an amazing possibility to engage with everything that interested me. Thanks to this type of programme I had the possibility to shape and understand my academic interests and career.

What was the main subject you concentrate during your studies and what was the topic of your final thesis? 

During my undergraduate degree I collected about 280ECTS. I was eager to learn as much as possible about the disciplines that interested me. My major is in Political Science and Government, my minor in Crossmedia Environments and International Relationships. I have studied four different languages: Estonian, French, Portuguese and Russian. Given my previous background in political studies in Italy and the continuation and completion of my curricula in Estonia, during the last year of my degree I decided to explore and concentrate on a different field, more on subjects offered by BFM, some of which were compulsory in my Crossmedia curriculum as well but the majority counted as electives. This choice gave me the possibility to go even deeper on a field that in any other degree I would have not have the possibility to touch. I understood the interdisciplinarity of my Liberal Arts degree as possibility to blend together different fields and to find a common denominator or interest of study. My thesis proposal was the result of the merge between topics that concerned politics and crossmedia practices. I demonstrated how projects with a social, civic and political aim that unfold on different platforms (TV, books, Internet) have the great potential to attract a wider amount of audience that interact together and engage deeply with the structure of the project itself pursuing a single cause through different media platforms. My research showed how such projects succeeded in changing fundamental political practices and structures on different levels.

Social science as an academic discipline investigates society as such and the relationships among individuals within a society.  In your opinion, what are the most significant outputs of social sciences in terms of developing the general knowledge of understanding the  social mechanisms at individual level? In other words, what are the benefits of social sciences for the individuals and also for the society? 

Social science is a wide and fascinating subject. It encompasses all the aspects of human life and its practices. I think it would be a very difficult subject if studied without being applied to everyday-life cases. It is quite difficult to identify an aspect that would be more important for the overall understanding of our society. I believe that there is nothing more bizarre than reality itself! However, while researching for my degree, I figured that human behaviour can also be predictable when studied in correlation to determined agents. For example, in my study I explored how to increase and attract audience engagement through different models, all of which offered a different perspective and new variables. What the study of social science taught me is how to compare, analyse and elaborate data to reach a result. I think this is the main benefit of the subject: it teaches us to assimilate and think.

In your opinion, what made studying at Tallinn University interesting? What were the best memories from Tallinn?

Tallinn University is the made up of a number of different colleges, departments and institutions. I think what makes this university stand out is that each of them is in contact with the others, and as students we are given the possibility to explore different fields of study and research because of this interconnectivity.

My best memories from Tallinn are the friends I made. Friends that became my family.

Do you use your field of study also in your everyday work and life?

In my everyday life I make a great use of my field of study. While writing my BA thesis I also sent out application for a range of postgraduate degrees in London. I have been accepted and started my Masters course in January, even before defending my thesis!

At the moment, I am studying Documentary Film-making at the University of the Arts of London. I have chosen to pursue a carrier in this field because I know this is what I can excel in and because my major in Politics and International Relations and minor in Crossmedia Environments blend naturally in documentary film-making. Real life is about anything, things we do not know and therefore we cannot imagine – I find the possibility to analyse people, to look into their lives and to unveil their stories extremely thrilling and inspiring. What I like about films is that data are given, along with so many other layers for understanding. It is a crossover of images, voices, people, places; it is an emotional window into a world that the audience would have never known about otherwise. Documentary is the category that inspires me the most – a possibility of portraying real stories, giving them a shape, taking each piece and sewing them together in a way that the message would come across even more powerfully.

My aim is to create something that will add knowledge and will put forward new questions. I decided to spend this past summer in a refugee camp in the north of Bethlehem, in the Palestinian territory, working on an individual project of an interactive documentary, following the lives of the people in the camp. This experience shaped me as a storyteller and enriched my understanding of documentary filmmaking. I found myself immersed in a great number of inspiring situations, and the stories that I wanted to tell became countless.

You can find my works here: http://saraannanadalini.altervista.org/