Bruno della Chiesa (born 7 July 1962) is a linguist of Italian, French and German descent, who describes himself as an "engaged cosmopolitan". He teaches at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and is considered one of the main founders of
educational neuroscience
Educational neuroscience (or neuroeducation, a component of Mind Brain and Education) is an emerging scientific field that brings together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, developmental cognitive neuroscience, educational psychology, educat ...
, is known to have coined the terms "neuromyth" (2002) and "neuro-hijacking" (2013) and has established theories on the "motivational
vortex
In fluid dynamics, a vortex ( : vortices or vortexes) is a region in a fluid in which the flow revolves around an axis line, which may be straight or curved. Vortices form in stirred fluids, and may be observed in smoke rings, whirlpools in th ...
" (2007) and on the “
tesseracts
In geometry, a tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eig ...
in the brain” (2008). He also created the international science fiction festival Utopiales.
Education
In the 1980s, after a first cycle of studies in linguistics, literature and Germanic philosophy in Nancy (France) and
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
(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
Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence i ...
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
, whom he worked with subsequently, he developed a growing interest for philosophy of language, often referring to
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
and
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
amongst his principal influences.
Professional life
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
The University of Guadalajara ( es, Universidad de Guadalajara) is a public higher education institution in the Mexican city of Guadalajara. The university has several high schools as well as graduate and undergraduate campuses, which are distr ...
, 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
The Institut Français (French capitalization, Institut français; "French institute") is a French public industrial and commercial organization (EPIC). Started in 1907 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for promoting French, francophone as ...
of Graz; at the end of 1994, he came back to France on invitation of the then President of the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
René Monory
René Monory (6 June 1923 – 11 April 2009) was a French centre-right Gaullist politician.
Biography
René Monory was born in Loudun and began his career as the owner of a garage. He was the founder of the Poitiers Futuroscope.
Monory first ...
, to manage the international relations of the French ''département''
Vienne
Vienne (; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Viéne'') is a landlocked department in the French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It takes its name from the river Vienne. It had a population of 438,435 in 2019.Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) at the
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
as a senior analyst (project manager). His projec "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 th 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 th International Education Policy an 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 th Mind, Brain and Education journal as well as a member of th 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). 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
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
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
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...
*B. della Chiesa, J. Scott & C. Hinton (Eds.) (2012), Languages in a Global World. Learning for Better Cultural Understanding. Paris: OECD.
*B. della Chiesa et al. (Eds.) (2007), Understanding the Brain – The Birth of a Learning Science (also available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Serbian and Spanish). Paris: OECD.
*B. della Chiesa et al. (Eds.) (2002), Understanding the Brain – Towards a New Learning Science (also available in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish). Paris: OECD.
*B. della Chiesa et al. (Eds.) (2002): Los Desafíos de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones en la Educación. Madrid: Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.
*Bund-Länder-Kommission für Bildungsplanung und Forschungsförderung; Österreich. Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur; Schweizerische Konferenz der Kantonalen Erziehungsdirektoren (2002) (Eds.): Lernen in der Wissensgesellschaft. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag.
Recent Articles
*della Chiesa, B. (2014). Switch on Brain with Science. IB World Magazine, 69(March ), 20-21.
*della Chiesa, B. (2013). Our Learning/Teaching Brains: What can be Expected from Neuroscience, and how? What should not be Expected from Neuroscience, and why? Proceedings of the 2013 Research Conference. How the Brain Learns: What lessons are there for teaching? (pp. 3–6). Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.
*della Chiesa, B. (2013). De la perfectibilité humaine, des neurosciences, de la libération, et des pommes de terre. In P. Toscani (Ed.), Les neurosciences au cœur de la classe (pp. 14–17). Lyon:
Chronique sociale
The ''Chronique Sociale'' (Social Chronicle) is a French organization founded in Lyon in 1892 to publish what became an influential organ of Catholic social activism. From 1904 the publishers began arranging annual study weeks (''semaines sociales' ...
.
*della Chiesa, B. (2013). Mieux comprendre le développement de l’enfant : ce que l’on peut et ne peut pas attendre des neurosciences. Paper presented at the Bien-être des jeunes enfants dans l’accueil et l’éducation en France et ailleurs, Actes du colloque des 10 et 11 octobre 2011 (pp. 25–29), Paris: Centre d’analyse stratégique, DREES, Ministère de la Santé.
*della Chiesa, B. (2012). Retour sur bilinguisme, multilinguisme et éducation. Les Vendredis Intellos, Interview by Ilse Dethune, from http://lesvendredisintellos.com/2012/02/23/retour-sur-bilinguisme-multilinguisme-et-education-guest/
*della Chiesa, B. (2012): "Expansion of our own being": Language learning, cultural belonging and global awareness. In B. della Chiesa, J. Scott & C. Hinton (Eds.), Languages in a Global World. Learning for Better Cultural Understanding. Paris: OECD, 437-461
*della Chiesa, B. (2012): Learning languages in a globalising world. In B. della Chiesa, J. Scott & C. Hinton (Eds.), Languages in a Global World. Learning for Better Cultural Understanding. Paris: OECD, 37-51
*della Chiesa, B. (2011), When Learning Languages, Motivation Matters Most. Interview by Nancy Walser, Harvard Education Letter 27/6, Nov.-Dec. 2011, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, pp. 6–8.
*Stein, Z., della Chiesa, B. Hinton, Ch., Fischer, K. (2011), Ethical Issues in Educational Neuroscience: Raising Children in a Brave New World. In J. Illes & B.J. Sahakian (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 803-822
*della Chiesa, B. (2010), Wanted: Tesseract – One Hypothesis on Languages, Cultures, and Ethics for Mind, Brain, and Education. Mind, Brain and Education, 4(3) September 2010, New York: Blackwell Publishing, 135-148.
*della Chiesa, B. (2010), ‘‘Fácilis descensus Averni’’ - Mind, Brain, Education, and Ethics: Highway to Hell, Stairway to Heaven, or Passing Dead-End? Mind, Brain and Education, 4(2) June 2010, New York: Blackwell Publishing, 45-48.
*della Chiesa, B. (2010). ‘‘Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt…’’ (pp. 9-29). In: Die Bedeutung der Sprache – Bildungspolitische Konsequenzen und Maßnahmen. Berlin: Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag.
*della Chiesa, B. (2010). Gute Gehirne gesucht! Von Neurowissenschaften, Lernen, Lehren, Medien, und Ethik (pp. 9-28). In: LERNtheoriEN - Protokoll 15/10. Rehburg-Loccum: Akademie Loccum.
*Rolbin, C. & della Chiesa, B. (2010), “We Share the Same Biology...” - Cultivating Cross-Cultural Empathy and Global Ethics through Plurilingualism. Mind, Brain and Education, 4(4) December 2010, New York: Blackwell Publishing, 197-208.
*della Chiesa, B. (2009), Beginning in the brain: Pioneering the field of educational neuroscience. Usable Knowledge, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge MA, March 2009. http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/learning/LD322.htm
*della Chiesa, B. (2009), Beginning in the brain: Pioneering the field of educational neuroscience. Usable Knowledge, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge MA, March 2009.
*della Chiesa, B. (2009), Ce qu’on sait sur la mémoire... et tout ce qui reste à apprendre. Cahiers Pédagogiques, n°474 ‘Aider à mémoriser’, Paris, 28-31.
*della Chiesa, B., Christoph, V. & Hinton, Ch. (2009), How Many Brains Does It Take to Build a New Light: Knowledge Management Challenges of a Transdisciplinary Project. Mind, Brain and Education, 3(1) March 2009, New York: Blackwell Publishing, 17-26.
*della Chiesa, B. & Christoph, V. (2009). Neurociencia y docentes: crónica de un encuentro. Cuadernos de pedagogía, vol. 386, Madrid, January 2009, 92-96.
*della Chiesa, B. (2008), Long Live Lifelong Brain Plasticity! Lifelong Learning in Europe (LLinE), Helsinki, 2008, 13 (2), 78-85.
*della Chiesa, B. (2008), « Introduction », Éducation, sciences cognitive et neurosciences, sous l’égide de l’Académie des Sciences (pp. 7–12 & 20 ; et commentaires: pp. 83–212). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France
*della Chiesa, B. & Miyamoto, K. (2008), Unlocking the secrets of mankind's most powerful machine, Glasgow: Teaching Scotland, Spring 2008, 14-15.
*Hinton, Ch., Miyamoto, K., & della Chiesa, B. (2008), Brain Research, Learning and Emotions: implications for education research, policy and practice. European Journal of Education, 43(1), 2008, London: Blackwell Publishing, 87-103.
Online Material
*Hinton, C., della Chiesa, B., Christoph, V., & Francis, H. (2014). Online Course: Brain and Learning. https://web.archive.org/web/20150518144552/http://www.neafoundation.org/pages/courses/: The NEA Foundation.
*Chomsky, N., Gardner, H., & della Chiesa, B. (2013). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Askwith Forum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ll6M0cXV54.