Bruno della Chiesa

Education

In the 1980s, after a first cycle of studies in linguistics, literature and Germanic philosophy in Nancy (France) and Bonn (Germany), he undertook his postgraduate studies in language didactics with Robert Galisson at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle where he touched upon sociolinguistics and worked with Louis Porcher on cultural anthropology and the sociology of education. Deeply influenced by the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Tzvetan Todorov and Noam Chomsky, whom he worked with subsequently, he developed a growing interest for philosophy of language, often referring to Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein amongst his principal influences.

Between "cultural diplomacy", teaching and research

Between 1985 and 1999, Bruno della Chiesa worked on several continents for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In Cairo, Egypt (1985-1987), he taught French literature and philosophy; in Mexico (1987-1990), as the coordinator of the French department within the University of Guadalajara, he created initial training and continuing education programs for French lecturers of the seven universities in the west of the country; in Austria (1990-1994), he directed the Institut français of Graz; at the end of 1994, he came back to France on invitation of the then President of the Senate René Monory, to manage the international relations of the French département Vienne.

OECD

In the beginning of 1999, he joined the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) at the OECD as a senior analyst (project manager). His project "Learning Sciences and Brain Research" (1999-2008), launched under the impulsion of Jarl Bengtsson, brought together over 300 experts from 26 countries and has led to the emergence of initiatives developing the transdisciplinary approach of "educational neuroscience", first in North America, Asia and Europe, and finally all over the world. During this time he started to work with Kurt Fischer and Howard Gardner at Harvard University. From 2007 to 2012, without abandoning neuroscience, he developed - between Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA), Ulm (Germany) and Paris (France) -, a controversial project on languages and cultures in an age of globalization. Numerous important divergences of philosophical nature concerning the objectives and orientations of this project, as well as on internal politics and structures, led to his leaving the Organisation in 2012.

Harvard

In 2007, Bruno della Chiesa was invited to the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and since 2008 teaches a yearly course there entitled “Learning in a Globalizing World: Language Acquisition, Cultural Awareness, and Cognitive Justice” within the International Education Policy and Mind, Brain and Education programs, as well as different seminars throughout the year. Interested in neuro-ethics (foremost in the sense of ‘the development of ethical judgments and decisions in the brain’), in 2009 he became the editor of the section "Addressing Educational Neuroscience and Ethics: Implications for Societies" ("AENEIS") in the Mind, Brain and Education journal, as well as a member of the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society (IMBES).

From 2012, alarmed by the multiplication of various questionable (or even fraudulent) forms of (mis-)use of the neurosciences in the education sector, Bruno della Chiesa regularly vehemently criticizes the disputable maneuvers of those he calls, depending on the case, “neuro-charlatans”, “neuro-zealots”, “neuro-hijackers” or “neuro-traffickers”.

As the focus of his research is however more and more turned towards the challenges and opportunities that globalization poses for contemporary societies and the education systems they generate (see his transdisciplinary theory on “tesseracts in the brain”, first presented in 2008 and continuously developed further), he is the Director for Global Education of the Harvard-faculty led initiative “Research Schools International”. Within this system of projects developed at Harvard, and whose network has started to take a global dimension in the past years, he is currently working across all continents, with a particular focus on the special and in various aspects exemplary case of Singapore. In the framework of his research during the last fifteen years, he has given over a hundred talks in four languages at conferences in forty countries.

Science fiction

Bruno della Chiesa has been an avid reader of science fiction since childhood and continues to read fiction with philosophical content regularly. In the early 1990s, he taught European science fiction literature at the University of Graz (Austria). At the end of 1995, he began working on the international science fiction festival, which three years later became ‘Utopia’, at the Futuroscope. The festival was relocated to Nantes in 2000 and renamed ‘Utopiales’ in 2001 when Bruno della Chiesa handed over the artistic direction to Patrick Gyger. Linked to this annual event, between 2000 and 2006 he published under the title “Utopiæ", 7 anthologies containing short stories by 70 science fiction authors from 40 countries and writing in 20 different languages. He also wrote approximately 50 literary critiques in the magazine Galaxies, most of which are available online at NooSFere.