Geraldina Albegiani (Palermo, 1994) is an independent curator and writer with a deep curiosity for contemporary artistic expressions. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation in Siena and later specialized in Visual Arts at Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna. In 2022, she participated in CAMPO, the curatorial course organized by the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin. She has collaborated with both Italian and international galleries, curating and co-curating numerous exhibitions in museums and unconventional spaces.
Piergiorgio Bertolozzi Caredio restores books, prints, engravings, manuscripts, and paper documents from every era. Additionally, he paints miniatures, initial letters, and copies of pages taken from Italian Renaissance graduals using the same techniques as ancient scribes. His studio, Sator Print, was established in Siena in 1999 as a restoration and art binding workshop, evolving over time into a multidisciplinary atelier.
At Federico II, Luca studied linguistics, literature, sociolinguistics, and didactics. He spent two years in the U.S. as a Cultural Representative, fostering a passion for teaching Italian. He has joined European projects on ecology and interculturalism, traveling to Poland, the UK, and Spain. While completing his dissertation, Luca walked the Camino de Santiago. Now, as an ESL/ISL tutor, he inspires students and teaches Italian in prisons all while pursuing a PhD on AI for plurilingualism in detention. Luca is fluent in French, Spanish, and Neapolitan; proficient in English.
Laura De Tanti moved from Milan in the early 1980s to learn the art of goldsmithing from Tuscan master artisans. She opened her own workshop and worked in the field for thirty years, creatively bridging tradition and contemporary jewelry design. Her prolific exhibition activity, especially in the last decade, has focused on practices of Social Art. Since 2011, she has been a member of the faculty at the Siena Art Institute.
Art can become a tool of investigation, with its main focus on human beings and their relationship with the environment. Since the late 1990s, Bernardo Giorgi has worked as an artist, exploring the identity of place through art, creating non-invasive works in harmony with their surroundings. The concept of nature, and of place, are fundamental to his practice. As a professional artist, he has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally.
As a man of the countryside, he bakes bread and delivers training on soil regeneration and permaculture design. For many years he has been experimenting with Organic and Regenerative Agriculture and is a member of the NGO ‘Deafal’.
Cristiano graduated in 2010 from the University of Perugia in Biological Sciences, specializing in environmental studies, subsequently joining Greenpeace for environmental monitoring and cetacean research. After working as a lab technician, he pursued studies in Permaculture and Regenerative Agriculture, collaborating with Deafal ONG. In 2017, he took over the family farm, focusing on self-sufficiency and consulting and later co-founded A.O.R. Toscana and, in 2024, began collaborating with SART.
Valeria Indice is an Italian language teacher with a passion for Italian culture.
Music and literature have always been passions of hers and she has explored various arts – medieval and Renaissance dance, Commedia dell’arte and mime – and, through singing, various repertoires – jazz, musicals, ethnic music – finally specializing in ancient polyphony and baroque musical forms. She sings alto in professional ensembles devoted to this repertoire and in the Polifonici Senesi where She met her husband Jeff. She has the privilege of annually coordinating SienAgosto – Summer Music Academy conducted by the renowned English countertenor Michael Chance. She loves the Italian language and madrigals, an art-form that weds poetry, music and visual art.
Irene Lupi studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, specializing in New Expressive Languages. She has collaborated with various organizations, including Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste in Berlin (2015–2018) and, since 2018, with Naturfreundejugend Württemberg in Stuttgart, and has been working on memory-focused projects. Irene joined the SART teaching staff in 2017, and has taught Digital Multimedia as well as the Art and Society course.
As an artist Irene has always been attracted by memory, as well as objects, movement and that which is passed down the generations.
Franca Marini is an Italian artist with an international background. After studying at the Duccio di Boninsegna Art Institute in Siena and the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, she continued her training as a painter at the San Francisco Art Institute in the United States. She lived and worked in New York for about ten years. Currently, after extensive exploration in painting, she creates installations and video works focusing on human rights themes. Her work has been exhibited in Europe, the United States, Central America, and Palestine.
Lisa Nonken is an American artist and educator, passionate about interdisciplinary explorations of intersections between art and civic life, finding connections in sectors of international tourism and sustainability in Tuscany’s inspiring territory. She teaches Art and Society course and Drawing.
Jeff studied psychology at Brown Univ., then moved to London where he worked in a domestic-violence refuge, discussing difficult relationships in co-authored non-fiction.
Later falling in love with fiction as a freer way to explore the dignity of individual
subjective experience, he has published two novels, Renato’s Luck and Secrets of Sant’Angelo. His third is underway. He works frequently as an Italian-to-English translator.
Jeff has enjoyed teaching at the SSLA and Siena Art Institute since the programs began. Music remains a passion, too. A resident of Italy since 1991, Jeff and his wife Valeria sing with ensembles in Siena and Florence.
Jacqueline Tune was born in London 1966, and received her degree in Photography and Media Studies at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design, in the UK . Her photography has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally since 1989. In 1987 she won the Benson and Hedges Student Photographer Award. In 2006 she took part in the exhibition COLORS, Fabrica; Les Yeux Ouverts at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In 2012 she won the Premio Celeste. Also in 2012 she participated in the project Missing Places in Belgrade, Serbia. In 2013 she was a finalist for Combat Prize and Premio Nocivelli. She teaches photography at Siena Art Institute and Siena School For The Liberal Arts.
Jacqueline Tune’s photographic work comes from an innate need to speak in images, telling the stories of her adopted land; who ‘we’ are, where ‘we’ live , what affects ‘our’ lives and how ‘we’ belong here in this moment in history. Whether it is the unassuming river running through the local town, the redundant machines and remains of materials from quarries cut deep into the side of the surrounding hills, an elderly neighbour preparing canes for her vegetable patch, or adolescents being themselves, exploding with the desire to grow up; with empathy and profound fascination Jacqueline strives to build quiet, yet tensely charged portraits of each of her subjects.
As a teacher and coordinator of basic and professional LIS courses, Filippo Calcagno collaborates with various universities, including the University of Parma, the University of Verona, the University of Padua, and the University of Venice. He has worked on numerous awareness-raising projects on LIS, aimed at university students and Red Cross personnel. His activities in the theater world are particularly significant, both as a director and an actor. Among his many performance projects, we can mention Il Segno della Memoria, Con voce nuova_L’Inferno di Dante, and Piacere, io sono sordo.
Laura di Gioia is a teacher of Italian Sign Language (LIS). During her studies, she was awarded an Erasmus scholarship, which allowed her to spend several months in the United Kingdom. In 2006, she received a “Mason Perkins” scholarship, enabling her to study for a year at Gallaudet University in the USA. She has worked as an Italian teacher for deaf students and later as a LIS teacher for both deaf and hearing students. She coordinates various courses, including an interpreter course in Bologna, where she also serves as a LIS and literature instructor.
Sara Radice is proficient in Italian Sign Language (LIS), American Sign Language (ASL), and German Sign Language (OGS). She obtained a diploma in Administrative Accounting in Padua and continued her education in alternative disciplines at a vocational school for holistic practitioners. She then attended numerous creative workshops and a training course to teach LIS as a foreign language. Since 2005, Sara Radice has been working as an LIS instructor. She also serves as a communication support assistant at a preschool and leads workshops on art and expressive creativity.
Pietro Rigo is an interpreter of Italian Sign Language (LIS) and Italian, with interests in Deaf culture and linguistics. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Linguistics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where he also obtained his B.A. and M.A. His research bridges the fields of linguistics and interpreting studies, focusing on idioms and figurative language in LIS. In the spring semester of 2024, he was at Stony Brook University (NY) as a visiting researcher, where he had the opportunity to continue his research while broadening his expertise in American Sign Language (ASL) and sign language research.
Sociologist and LIS Interpreter since 1991, Rita is a lecturer in Interpreting Techniques and Deaf Culture at public and private institutions, including Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Siena Art Institute, and Siena School for Liberal Arts. From 2007 to 2013, she served as Vice President of ANIOS – the Italian Sign Language Interpreters Association. She is currently a member of the Examining Commission and President of the Board of Arbitrators. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Mason Perkins Deafness Fund Onlus.
Since 2007, Elisa Verrando has worked as a freelance Italian Sign Language–Italian interpreter, collaborating with public and private institutions throughout Italy. Her professional activity spans community interpreting, training courses, seminars, conferences, and symposia. Since 2015, she has served as an Italian Sign Language–Italian interpreter at the University of Milan Bicocca.
Since 2022, she has collaborated as an instructor of written Italian at the Summer School of the Siena School for Liberal Arts. She has also taught the module on simultaneous interpretation LIS/Italian and Italian/LIS: interpreting techniques, as part of the Italian Sign Language interpreter training program at ENS Bergamo (academic year 2022/2023).
In 2007, she obtained her qualification as an Italian Sign Language interpreter after completing the Advanced Training Course in Theories and Techniques of Italian Sign Language Interpreting at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Since 2018, she has been developing independent research on the topic “Flexibility in Sign Language Interpreting: Emotional and Social Proxemics.”
Elisa Verrando has been a member of ANIOS (Italian Sign Language Interpreters Association) since 2010. Since June 2013, she has served as President of the ANIOS Lombardy Regional Council, and since 2015 she has been a member of the Association’s Professional Profile Committee. For several years, she has also been actively involved in professional mentoring.
