Message From The President:
the future of education

The future of education rests – in my view – on two main principles: on the one hand, staying true to what has always grounded it, and what is its very purpose, namely fostering and promoting human growth via intellectual and spiritual development; and on the other hand, responding to what are the extraordinary challenges of our time, whether it’s the issue of climate change, of social atomization in a world that is more and more connected and less and less related in a communal sense, or the challenges we are facing with increasingly disruptive technologies and their repercussions on a social, political, and ecological level. These and otherepochal turning points must become the object of thinking, in order to create new ways of seeing the world and produce new interpretations that in turn can affect change.  

None of this is possible, however, without expanding and augmenting our imagination – our capacity to reimagine how things could be. In the face of the products of our making, in particular, we are witnessing a failure of imagination on a global scale, and that’s where the artist comes in. Wherever I look, I see a pressing need for new ways of thinking and imagining. I am deeply convinced that our students at IDSVA are the ones who can step up to the challenge by combining the emancipatory powers of the artist with the rigour and the critical tools of the philosopher.

As president and educator, my primary role is to carry forward the mission of IDSVA to nurture this form of critical and creative thought and the work of the artist-philosopher. The key goal of my presidency is to promote the development of this new thought, by supporting students’ research with the best possible education they can get, and with increasing scholarship support for their studies. IDSVA nurtures the creative leaders that our world urgently needs to meet the crises and possibilities of our time, and I am thankful for the opportunity to steer IDSVA into the future.  

Dr. Simonetta Moro
Professor of Art, Philosophy, and Visual Studies
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