INSTITUTE FOR DOCTORAL STUDIES
IN THE VISUAL ARTS
The IDSVA Summer Faculty bring together major philosophers, artists, and scholars from around the world. These internationally renowned educators join students at residency sites and lead seminar discussions about the site's historical, aesthetic, and ideological significance.
HOWARD CAYGILL is a philosopher and cultural historian educated at the UK’s Bristol, Sussex, and Oxford Universities. Most recently serving on the faculties of Goldsmiths, Kingston, and Paris VIII, Howard Caygill is the author of several acclaimed books, including A Kant Dictionary; Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience; On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance; Kafka: In Light of the Accident and most recently, Force and Understanding. Writings on Philosophy and Resistance. He is currently working on the philosophy and aesthetics of the Anthropocene and the role of philosophy in curating and interpreting the art produced by inmates of mental hospitals during the first half of the Twentieth Century. He lives between Athens and Barton-on-Sea on the coast of England.
NEPHI CRAIG has 24 years of culinary experience in the U.S. and internationally. He is an enrolled member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and half Navajo. Chef Craig is the founder of the Native American Culinary Association or NACA, an organization/network that is dedicated to the research, refinement, and development of Native American Cuisine. Craig was featured in the film Gather (2020), a documentary on Indigenous Food Sovereignty, and is a pioneer in developing Restorative Indigenous Food Practices. He received an honorary doctorate from IDSVA in 2022 for his achievements.
JASON HOELSCHER is Gallery Director and Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at Georgia Southern University. Hoelscher received an MFA in painting from the Pratt Institute and a PhD in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory from IDSVA, where he completed his dissertation under the supervision of Brian Massumi. His book Art as Information Ecology was published by Duke University Press in 2021 and nominated for the American Society of Aesthetics “Outstanding Monograph” award in 2022. Hoelscher has exhibited his paintings worldwide and has written for such publications as Burnaway, ARTnews, ArtPulse, and ArtCore Journal.
DEJAN LUKIĆ is trained as an anthropologist (PhD, Columbia University, 2007). His research encompasses continental philosophy, science and religion, art, and ecology. He is engaged in developing what could be called avant-garde philosophy and multi-ontology. Consequently, he is interested in ways in which art crosses into life. He has published two books and numerous catalogue essays. He is currently writing a multi-volume manuscript titled Deranged Vivarium: Variations on Coexistence. He lives and works between the high desert of New Mexico and an Adriatic island in Croatia.
FRANCA MARINI is an Italian international artist based in Siena. After many years of experience in the visual arts, she is currently engaged with site-specific installations and video art. Her work has been shown in Europe, the United States, Central America, and Palestine.
SILVIA MAZZINI, a philosopher and theatre author, works on the intersection of Aesthetics and Political Philosophy. She published on arts and politics in Pasolini, Bloch, and Vattimo, on comic thought and community theatre. Currently, she is developing a Philosophy of Poverty. Before joining IDSVA, she worked i.a. at Humboldt University Berlin (where she also obtained her PhD) and Berlin University of the Arts. She lives in The Netherlands.
SIMONETTA MORO is a visual artist and scholar focusing on painting, drawing, and mapping practices. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally; publications include Mapping Paradigms in Modern and Contemporary Art: Poetic Cartography (Routledge, 2021) and The Vattimo Dictionary (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Moro holds a PhD in Fine Arts, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK; an MA in European Fine Arts, Winchester School of Art, UK; and a BFA in Painting Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna, Italy. She currently lives in New York City and spends time in Northern Italy.
NINA PAPAZOGLOU was born in Thessaloniki and studied International Relations in Greece (BA) and Belgium (MA). In 2004, she studied interdisciplinary research in the Humanities at Birkbeck’s London Consortium and at Humboldt University. In 2013 she obtained her PhD in Cultural History, supervised by Howard Caygill, from Goldsmiths’ College (UOL). Her research is centered on the non-autonomous character of contemporary artistic values and the way these inform economic and cultural capital and the context of art history. She has been collaborating since 2012 with IDSVA in Berlin and Athens and is currently based on the island of Crete.
GEORGE SMITH is the founder of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Professor Smith writes on literature, the visual arts, visual culture, psychoanalytic theory, and philosophy of education. He is the author of The Artist-Philosopher and New Philosophy (Routledge, 2018), The Artist-Philosopher and Poetic Hermeneutics (Routledge, 2021), and The Artist-Philosopher in the Age of Addiction (Routledge, 2025).
SHARA WASSERMAN is an American art historian and curator of contemporary art, and the director of the Temple Rome Gallery of Art at Temple University in Rome, where she is also a faculty member in the Art History program. Wasserman has curated numerous international exhibitions in public and institutional spaces.
IDSVA is a low-residency PhD program in philosophy, aesthetics, and art theory for artists and creative thinkers. Founded in 2006 in Portland, ME, the Institute fuses interactive online education with immersive residencies, aiming to foster a global sense of community and generate new visions for a changing world.
We are accepting applications for September 2025 enrollment. Inquire today or email info@idsva.edu for more information.