“Research” is something that until very recently has seemed so self-evident as to deserve no comment. Now it is in the news, at least in the United States, almost every day. Where once research was an ignored but vital piece of the global knowledge economy, now it is under attack in a way that has not been seen in Europe and North America.
On May 4th, the American Academy in Rome, in collaboration with Aspen Institute Italia, will explore the history, present, and future meanings of research. This conference, bringing together historians, artists, and scientists, aims to show how our understanding of this important subject is expanded by treating it comparatively; by putting different aspects of it into conversation and by looking both to the past and the present in order to think better about the future.
The day is structured by pairing scholars and artists in conversation examining research through particular lenses such as “science,” "belonging," “the view from the seventeenth century,” "routes to searching," “the view from Asia," and “beyond art + science.” The concluding evening event is a moderated conversation about “AI and Research.” The morning session takes place at the home of Aspen Italia in Piazza Navona, the afternoon and evening at the Academy's Villa Aurelia.
Peter N. Miller, President and CEO of the America Academy in Rome, notes that “the importance of this moment in the history of research cannot be underestimated. And yet, without understanding what research is, and the power of research as a particular form of creativity, we will not be able to understand our moment or take charge of our future. The pairing of artists and scholars reflects the way the Academy can use its own identity to do this necessary work.”
The proposal builds on a range of former initiatives taken in the past years by Aspen Institute Italia under the headings of “Pure Science” and “Democracy and the Arts” and converges with the mission of the American Academy in Rome. Angleo Petroni, Secretary General of Aspen Institute Italia explains that “The American Academy in Rome has had a historic and pivotal role in developing the links between the US, Italy, and Europe, on humanities and fine arts. Aspen Institute Italia was founded more that forty years ago with the same mission in the field of international relations, the economy, science and technology. The cooperation with AAR is a great opportunity for Aspen Italia to expand our scope.”
“The Past, Present, and Future of Research” concludes a cycle of events this spring that have brought artists, scientists, and humanists to the Academy to explore topics where the historic work of the Academy in archaeology, art, and more broadly research was used as a platform from which to focus on important contemporary questions including the work of AI, the future of memory and the state of research in the world.
The conference will take place on Monday May 4, 2026 at the respective homes of the two institutions, beginning with a closed morning session (by invitation only) at Aspen Institute Italia and, from 3 pm, moving to the Villa Aurelia of the American Academy in Rome (Largo di Porta S. Pancrazio, 1) for the public-facing section of the conference.
Click here for more information about the public program.
Participants
Clifford Ando, Professor in the Department of Classics and History, University of Chicago
Giulia Bini, Curator and Head of Arts at Cern, Geneva
Maya Binyam, Writer; John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize, a Gift of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman, American Academy in Rome; and Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature, Claremont McKenna College
D. Graham Burnett, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and History of Science, Princeton University, and Director of Strother School of Radical Attention (Brooklyn)
Francesca Cappelletti, Director of Galleria Borghese and Full Professor, University of Ferrara
T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, Artist and Jules Guerin | John Armstrong Chaloner Rome Prize Fellow, American Academy in Rome
Tristan Duke, Artist
Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University; Director of the Black Hole Initiative, Science Teams Lead for the Black Hole Explorer; and Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration coordinator for the History, Philosophy, and Culture working group
Theaster Gates, Artist and Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, University of Chicago
Zoë Hitzig, Society of Fellows, Harvard University, and former Research Scientist at OpenAI
John Keene, Board of Governors Professor of English and Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies, Rutgers University-Newark
André Laks, Centre Léon Robin, Université Paris-Sorbonne and Universidad Panamericana, Campus Mexico
Jeffrey Moser, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University
Tino Sehgal, Artist
Simone Severini, Strategic Advisory Board Member, Lean-FRO