[Protagonists in the classroom. For the 100 years of political sciences]

Prosopography is a research practice and method in the field of historiography. It consists - as is well known - in the systematic collection of biographical and iconographical data on personalities (or even simple persons) ascribable to a certain set: temporal, professional, geographical, etc. I wrote ‘as it is known’, even though I have the impression that the method and perhaps the word itself are in decline today. Yet, it is precisely that word that came to mind while reading this Notebook.
Prosopography is usually associated with the idea of a meticulous erudition that is an end in itself, all in all pedantic. Nonetheless, in its best, loftiest forms, this practice has served to reconstruct, with the faces of individuals, those of their world. Famous is Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier's prosopographical study of late 18th century English parliamentarians'. Published in 1929, it significantly changed the interpretation of British politics of the time, and perhaps also of parliamentarianism in general.
This, then, is what this long foreword is intended to address. What the reader is in for, once he has finished reading this preface, is an encounter with an excellent prosopographical exercise. The medallions drawn up and collected here by Silvio Beretta, the gallery of portraits along which he guides us reconstruct, in effect, a world. And a complex and composite microcosm, yet one that can easily be traced back to unity and identity: the Faculty of Political Science in Pavia.