NASP (Network for the Advancement of Social and Political Studies) is a research-based training network that aims at enhancing training and research in social and political studies in Italy. Established in 2012, the network is based at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan, and includes the Departments and training institutions in social and political studies of seven Universities in the North-West of Italy: the University of Brescia, the Collegio Carlo Alberto, the University of Genova, the University of Milan, the University of Pavia, the University of Eastern Piedmont and the University of Turin. It also receives an important financial support from the two greatest Foundations in the North of Italy operating in Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria: Fondazione Cariplo and Compagnia di San Paolo. Moreover, NASP actively cooperates in the organization of joint training and research activities with other institutions in Turin, such as Centro Einaudi and its Comparative Politics and Public Philosophy Lab (LPF).

NASP provides three joint PhD programmes in the fields of Economic Sociology and Labour Studies (ESLS), Political Studies (POLS), and Sociology and Methodology of Social Research (SOMET), which have been included in the Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan since the A.Y. 2013/2014. It also provides other training activities, such as international seminars, winter, spring and summer schools and workshops and seminars, offered within the network and also to students from external Universities, public and private research institutions and from the industry sector. All these activities are characterized by a great emphasis on multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches, and by a high level of quality and internationalization. NASP cooperates with several national and international universities, research centers and institutions, and relies also on the cooperation of several individual scholars from other Italian Universities, who are actively involved in its PhD programmes and in the other training and research activities.