On April 22, 2022, the Assembly of Members of VIU voted unanimously to re-elect Ambassador Umberto Vattani as President of the association for a 7th term. Since Ambassador Vattani joined VIU as President in 2001, he has overseen the growth and expansion of this young institution from eight member universities to twenty in 2020.
President Vattani graciously accepted the renewed nomination, and thanked the members, adding:
"Venice International University continues to grow, day after day, and to broaden the scope of its topics to address the global issues of today. It is a pride and an honour to be a part of this unique Institution and to lead such an extraordinary team".
Mr. Luigi Brugnaro, Mayor of the Metropolitan City of Venice has been elected Vice President.
The Assembly named Prof. Carmelo Marabello as Dean, VIU's chief academic officer.
The outgoing Dean, Carlo Giupponi, had announced in January that he would not stand for re-election, choosing to return to his research activities at Ca' Foscari and taking up a new role as Director of the Programme on Climate Change Adaptation at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei. Giupponi concludes his second term at VIU, having guided VIU efficiently through the pandemic. At the Assembly meeting, he thanked the President, the Board, and Council members and shared his consideration that it was the right time to hand over the baton to someone who would introduce some new and fresh ideas.
Carmelo Marabello is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Università Iuav di Venezia where he teaches Cinema and Contemporary Arts, Media Theory, Anthropology of Images, Globalization and Media, and Film, Landscape and Architecture. He has previous experience as co-director of the Taormina International Film Festival, followed by a ten-year experience working for RAI, Italy’s national public
broadcasting company, during which he authored and edited television programs and supervised production strategies for films and documentaries.
Having returned to academia in the 2000s, he has developed research interests in anthropology, cinema, media theory and the arts.
In nominating Prof. Marabello, Iuav Rector Benno Albrecht laid out their shared vision for VIU and the city of Venice as an extended university campus, where the future of the planet and its biodiversity can take center stage, where environmentally sustainable projects can be devised, and where culture, the arts, and the media can be seen as forms and modes of a project for coexistence, within the framework of an anthropology of complexity.
In thanking the members for entrusting him with the role of Dean, Marabello affirmed his conviction that:
"The ideal university must maintain its transnational mission, trespassing all possible borders. If universities embody the incredible opportunity to mix global and glocal instances, and to achieve scientific knowledge through cooperation, today VIU is in the best position possible to confirm this very vocation".
The Assembly elected the following representatives of the member institutions to the governing bodies:
Board of Directors:
James Keenan, Boston College
Daniele Archibugi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Giovanni Zanalda, Duke University
Oleg Kharkhordin, European University at St. Petersburg
LEE Hikyoung, Korea University
Peter Lievens, KU Leuven
Bernd Huber, Ludwig Maximilians Universität
Hester Klopper, Stellenbosch University
Milette Shamir, Tel Aviv University
YUE Dongbei, Tsinghua University
Carla Andreani, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata
Fabrizio Marrella, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia
Daniela Mapelli, Università degli Studi di Padova
Margherita Turvani, Università Iuav di Venezia
Giuseppe Gorini, Università Milano-Bicocca
Dean Lewis, Université de Bordeaux
Frédéric Herman, Université de Lausanne
Mark Goodwin, University of Exeter
Gregor Majdic, Univerza v Ljubljani
GEMMA Masahiko, Waseda University
Academic Council:
Eileen Sweeney, Boston College
Daniele Archibugi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Stephen Nowicki, Duke University
Natalia Mazur, European University at St. Petersburg
LEE Hikyoung, Korea University
Bart Raymaekers, KU Leuven
Hans Van Ess, Ludwig Maximilians Universität
Robert Kotze, Stellenbosch University
Dorit Tanay, Tel Aviv University
ZHAO Ming, Tsinghua University
Gustavo Piga, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata
Sara De Vido, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia
Cristina Basso, Università degli Studi di Padova
Maria Chiara Tosi, Università Iuav di Venezia
Lucia Visconti Parisio, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca
Laurent Servant, Université de Bordeaux
Anne-Christine Fornage, Université de Lausanne
Sally Faulkner, University of Exeter
Ksenija Vidmar Horvat, Univerza v Ljubljani
Katherine Elwood, Waseda University
