04 Luglio 2017
He will officially take office from October 1, 2017
Professor Andrea Pieroni has been named as the new Dean of the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo for the 2017-2020 period, and will take office from October 1, 2017. Currently Professor of Food Botany and Ethnobotany and Vice-Dean of Research at the university, Pieroni’s appointment was announced on June 30.
“It is with sincere gratitude for the confidence that UNISG’s board has placed in me that I look forward to guiding the Pollenzo university for the next three years”, said Pieroni.
“UNISG finds itself at a crucial time of transition, thanks to the tireless work carried out in the past years by Dean Grimaldi together with President Petrini and all of the lecturers, whom I would like to thank”, he added. “In autumn 2018 we will launch innovative curricula in the new degree classes and prepare for the accreditation of a research doctorate program. We have set ourselves the aim of increasing the number of international students and most importantly of creating a ‘diffused university’ which in the medieval academic spirit of the studium generale or universale, conceived in close consultation with the local communities and professors from dozens of universities, should concretize the inalienable right to education on food-related themes in many corners of the world.”
He concluded: “During my mandate, UNISG will continue to work to intersect experimental teaching and research through the strengthening of a methodology that confirms the centrality of the study trip along with research in the field. This will mean an ever-increasing synergy with local communities and their constantly transforming traditional knowledge in various places, with a focus on the current migratory dynamics and their cargo of innovation, change and interaction.”
Biography
After studying pharmaceutical botany at the University of Pisa, the University of Antwerp and the University of Bonn (where he received his doctorate), Andrea Pieroni began working as a researcher at the University of London in 2000 and from 2003 was a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer at the University of Bradford in the UK. On returning to Italy he coordinated the international Master programs in Pollenzo.
Principal Investigator (PI) for the first research project funded by the European Commission on traditional Mediterranean knowledge linked to plants, former president of the International Society of Ethnobiology and founder and currently editor-in-chief of the scientific journal published by Springer/Nature, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (IF: 1.9), Pieroni has carried out numerous missions and field research trips to study the complex system of popular botanical-gastronomic knowledge within diasporas and minority groups in the Balkans (especially among the intersection of Albanian, Slavic and Romanian populations), in the Near East (Kurdistan) and in migrant communities in Europe. Since 2015 he has been an honorary member of the Albanian Academy of Sciences.
