Participant’s experience: 2023 Summer School

The CSMBR Summer School is without equal among international study programs in my experience as a doctoral student based in Austria and from the United States. Invited scholars are of world-renowned excellence. They are truly erudite and passionately enthusiastic. Going above and beyond the classroom, these lecturers offer demonstrations, experiments, and field trips to the nearby cultural heritage sites. Among the international and multicultural faculty and students, classical Latin, Greek, and Arabic is spoken alongside contemporary Italian, German, English, and many other languages. By networking with these intellectuals, participants can open the door not only to further discourse but also to future collaboration. Indeed, I had a life and career altering good time!

I attended the Summer School for the first time in July 2023. Meeting in the Domus Comeliana, a location adjacent to the beautiful Leaning Tower and Pisa Cathedral, was a wondrous opportunity. I found the program – which blended medicine, natural philosophy, sciences, philosophy, art, art history, and musicology – to be a perfect interdisciplinary mix to explore this year’s theme, ‘Intensity and the grades of nature’. 

Under the superb and dynamic leadership of the esteemed scholar Dr Fabrizio Bigotti, a panel of international experts was assembled for the program, mostly in person, but some including Professor Vivian Nutton and Prof Martin Kemp, on-line. I would have preferred them to be presenting in person but at least they were contributing by video link.  I missed out on meeting them, but hopefully I will meet them in person at future meetings. The speakers explored their topics in depth, and the quality of all the presentations was superb.  I learnt so much, and now have a much greater perspective on the breadth of knowledge, extant and emerging, in this field.  It was stimulating to interact with the faculty and the students at the meeting and many new contacts were made.

Being able to visit the local historical sites and receive presentations on art restoration and also experience the most incredible echo in the Baptismal building next to the Pisa Cathedral was fascinating.  Overall, I would say the experience was stimulating, informative and enlightening. I highly recommend it for students of history and philosophy. As an academic neurosurgeon, I wish to pursue my interests in medical history in the medieval and renaissance periods and I will be back all the way from Melbourne, Australia, for future events! 

Vivat CSMBR Summer School!