Venue

The Kore University Enna

MUM 2025 will be hosted at The Kore University Enna, building "E" (Location). The Kore University Enna is an independent private higher education institution. It is one of the newest private universities in Italy. Its legal status was legislated by the Ministry of Education, University and Research, on 5 May 2005.

• 5 Departments
  • Engineering and Architecture
  • Economics and Law
  • Humanities, Foreign Language and Education
  • Human and Social Sciences
  • Medicine and Surgery
• ≈ 8k students
  • ≈ 1k new enrollments per year
  • ≈ 900 graduates per year
• ≈ 200 faculty staff
• 7 active doctoral courses
• 4 research centres
  • 17 research labs
• The library
  • 1,000 seats
  • >75k documents
  • 10,000 sq. metres

Origin of the name: When astronomy was less science and more poetry, the manifestations of nature coincided with the whims, struggles, desires and pleasures of the gods. In those days, long before the birth of Christ, in much of the Mediterranean, the alternation of the seasons was attributed to a young goddess who spent her years for six months on the earth's surface and for six months underground. The young goddess was called Kore, and she was the daughter of the goddess Demeter or Ceres.

Legend has it that Kore, while picking flowers near Enna on the shores of Lake Pergusa, was kidnapped by the god Pluto and taken by him to his kingdom of the dead. Ceres' wrath led to the blocking of the flowering of the fields and the annual birth of the fruits of the earth that took her name, cereals. Thus, spring and summer ceased. In Greco-Latin mythology, the search for solutions to conflicts between the gods was up to Jupiter, who then promoted the compromise of the rotation of Kore: six months with Pluto and six months with her mother Demeter.

Since then, in the Mediterranean, in Sicily and in particular in Enna, only two seasons have alternated instead of four: the season itself, which coincides with the return of Kore to earth, and winter, which indicates her absence.

When the Province of Enna, the body from which the idea of creating a new university in Sicily started in 1995, decided that the project could materialise, it first thought, as is done in these cases, of its official coat of arms.

The coat of arms of the Province of Enna is very simple: it represents the goddess Ceres, because central Sicily has always been the land of wheat, one of the best in the world. Since the university was originally thought of as the "daughter" of the Province of Ceres, it was given the name of "Kore". But Kore is, above all, a goddess and idea of spring, of rebirth, of the growing phase of the life cycle.

The name Kore was preferred above Persephone, Proserpina or Libera – all alternate names of the same goddess – because its diffusion connotes all the civilisations of the Mediterranean, those further north and those further south, those further west and those further east, so it describes, better than the other names of the same myth, the infinite directions of research and knowledge and the relations between cultures.

Important dates

Previous editions

• MUM 2024

  Stockholm, Sweden

• MUM 2023

  Vienna, Austria

• MUM 2022

  Lisbon, Portugal

• MUM 2021

  Leuven, Belgium

• MUM 2020

  Essen, Germany

• MUM 2019

  Pisa, Italy

• MUM 2018

  Cairo, Egypt

• MUM 2017

  Stuttgart, Germany

• MUM 2016

  Rovaniemi, Finland

• MUM 2015

  Linz, Austria

• MUM 2014

  Melbourne, Australia

• MUM 2013

  Luleå, Sweden

• MUM 2012

  Ulm, Germany

• MUM 2011

  Beijing, China

• MUM 2010

  Limassol, Cyprus

• MUM 2009

  Cambridge, UK

• MUM 2008

  Umeå, Sweden

• MUM 2007

  Oulu, Finland

• MUM 2006

  Stanford, USA

• MUM 2005

  Christchurch, New Zealand

• MUM 2004

  College Park, USA

• MUM 2003

  Norrköping, Sweden