The entire IIAs and EGPA community mourn the loss of Carla Barbati, University Professor of administrative law for many years and, since 2021, a Councillor of State of Italy, who passed away on 6 September 2023.

Carla served as a Member of the Council of Administration of IIAS between 2010 and 2019, contributing to its works with her great wisdom and insightfulness, her strong expertise in administrative law, her always positive and constructive attitude, and her kindness, joviality, and collegial attitude.

Carla specialised in the administrative law of cultural institutions as well as of higher education institutions, and she served as Vice President and President of the Consiglio Universitario Nazionale – National University Council, a key body in the higher education policy field of Italy, over most of the past decade, as well as in myriad roles in cultural and artistic institutions (mentioning just one: Professor Carla Barbati served in the Museo dei Fori Imperiali – the Museum of the Imperial Fora of Rome). She always upheld the highest standards of public ethics in all her roles, conjoining it with an entrepreneurial spirit which contributed to transform the institutions she served, bringing them a renewed sense of purpose and revitalising these institutions in the pursuit of their mandate and mission. She has often brought a fresh and novel perspective, challenging the conventional ways of managing academic as well as cultural institutions. On the scientific side of her activity, Carla was a prolific writer and, here too, a very entrepreneurial scholar: amongst other initiatives, she was a founding editor of the journal Aedon - Rivista di arti e diritto online, a journal devoted to the interdisciplinary study of arts management.

While serving in so many, and so prominent, roles in Italy, Carla worked tirelessly to deepen and broaden the interconnections of the Italian PA community within the IIAS family: the goal of bringing the Italian PA into the international world of the administrative sciences, and the international dimension into the Italian PA, acted as a polar star of Carla’s inexhaustible contribution to the administrative sciences worldwide. Her experience as a young PhD scholar in the US (at the Woodrow Wilson Department of the University of Virginia) equipped her with the linguistic, intellectual and relation-management skills for excelling at this task – like in all other tasks she took upon themselves, inspired by a stern commitment to the public good and underpinned and led by a profound moral compass.

For many a very dear friend, for everyone a most esteemed colleague in the profession, Carla has been an entrepreneur of public institutions – true embodiment of the figure of the public entrepreneur and the creator of public value, unflinching in her commitment to the greater, common good. Recently, in 2021, she accepted a new, very challenging task, by being appointed by the Draghi government to the Council of state, the highest administrative court in Italy as well as a key advisory body to the government. Shifting from the comfort of an academic job to the ‘frontline’ of one of the highest magistracy would have made throb the pulse of many - but not of Carla, who threw herself into this new phase of her already so rich professional life with the usual stern dedication, hard work discipline, impressive competence, deep passion. The devastating illness that caught her too early in her life and so early in her new job, dramatically interrupted this new phase of her professional life: an incommensurable loss for her mother, her innumerable friends, the scholarly community of the administrative sciences, and the institution of the state she has been serving with all her energies until her premature passing away.

We miss you: your wise advice, your contagious smile, your incredible work discipline and intellectual acumen, your stern morality always the compass of your choices and concrete behaviours. The entire IIAs community will miss you – but we are comforted by knowing that your exemplary life at the service of the administrative sciences will always shine.

Edoardo Ongaro (IIAS CoA Member, Past President EGPA)

Aristide Police (President, IIAS Italy)

Loredana Giani (IIAS, EGPA)

Gabriella Racca (IIAS, EGPA)

Anna Simonati (IIAS, EGPA)