Collaborative research project
Project leader: ZRS Koper. Collaborator: SLORI. Executor of the questionnaire: SWG
Project manager: Milan Bufon. Collaborator: Norina Bogatec
Project implementation period: 2021- 2022
The project is part of a larger, long-term research project, which in the first phase focused on changing the ethnic and social aspect of the Trieste Karst and places traditionally populated by Slovenes around Trieste, while in the second phase the project author focused on a more detailed study of Slovenes in the city of Trieste, i.e., what has been the largest Slovenian urban community within the Slovenian ethnic territory. With the help of the Trieste-based survey company SWG, a general sample questionnaire was conducted on the entire population of Trieste in order to obtain data on the ethnic and linguistic structure of the city’s population (including information on the ethnic and local origins of this population), as well as on its interethnic and intercultural attitudes, i.e., how much these attitudes depend on motivations based on age, education, and social motives, but also on broader geopolitical, historical, and environmental motivations. In this way, a completely original set of data will be made available that will allow us to draw, for the first time, a more precise picture of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the urban Slovenian community in Trieste and its insertion into the urban social context, but also of its broader insertion into the Slovenian community in Italy and the Slovenian cultural space in general. Data from the general survey will shed light on current interethnic and intercultural relations in Trieste and the extent to which the city has maintained or restored its traditional multicultural image, after a long period in which Slovenes had become completely invisible and imperceptible in “very Italian Trieste.” The results of the research were published in 2023 in the scholarly monograph Tržaški Slovenci: zgodba nekoč največje slovenske urbane skupnosti. The book, published in cooperation with the Slovenian Research Institute – SLORI and co-published by Slovenska matica, the Annales of the Koper Scientific Research Center and ZTT-EST, was presented in December 2023 at the Gopcevich Palace in Trieste.