New Rector of Federico II: “The priority is to build a close-knit community”

“The top priority will be to build an increasingly united and cohesive university community, capable of making the most of the extraordinary wealth of expertise at Federico II and of facing the changes that lie ahead with confidence”. So says the philologist Andrea Mazzucchi, the new Vice-Chancellor of the University of Naples Federico II, who will take up his post on Tuesday 1 September. Elected on 3 July in the first round of voting, he succeeds Matteo Lorito and will lead the University until 2032. “I take on this role,” says the new rector, “with a very strong sense of responsibility and the awareness that I am becoming part of the history of an extraordinary university, to which I have dedicated a large part of my academic life.”

Among the objectives is to make Federico II increasingly competitive at both national and international level. Students are at the heart of the new rector’s vision. “We will work to tangibly improve their university experience,” emphasises Mazzucchi, “and to strengthen the University’s capacity to deliver teaching and research of the highest standard and to compete at an international level, by supporting our researchers in accessing competitive funding and fostering interdisciplinary and international collaborations, because theuniversity cannot merely be a place where skills are acquired and qualifications obtained, but must serve as the fundamental driving force in the development of critical thinking, in the ability to interpret the present and shape the future, including in the service of the wider community”.

Mazzucchi, aged 60, is a full professor of Italian Literary Philology and is serving his second term as head of the Department of Humanities; he is a former president of the University’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences and is regarded as one of the leading scholars of Dante and the medieval Italian literary tradition. With Andrea Mazzucchi, the University’s leadership returns to a humanist for the first time since the term of Professor Fulvio Tessitore (1993–2001).