Realising your full potential: Guest Lecture Francesco Dimitri Event

Theme

A PhD is a journey, and when it is over, another journey begins - a longer and more difficult one. While exciting, the PhD journey and the road afterwards can also be daunting. We are going to meet rough patches, doubt, frustrations big and small; when we try to get published, when we feel our work piling on top of us or when we feel we haven't achieved as much as our peers. How can we keep our eyes set on our goal?

A sense of wonder

The answer, one answer, is by cultivating our sense of wonder. From Plato to Einstein, scientists and philosophers agree that that a sense of wonder is the common source of all human adventures; it motivates us to look into microscopes, to create better computers, or immerse ourselves into ancient myths and the pleasures of the arts. And when the going gets tough, it is our sense of wonder that makes us resilient.

Through a lecture and hands-on workshops, we will discover the nature of wonder. We will learn how to harness it in good times, to be more creative, and in bad times, to face our fears. Whether your interests lie in sciences or humanities, you will find how to turn this strange feeling into a powerful ally.

In the lecture we will see how wonder has been conceived by scientists and philosophers and how to bring their insights into our life. In the workshops we will delve into the practice of wonder, learning useful techniques that will help us to use wonder to keep our enthusiasm alive, our creative ideas flowing, and our stress under control.

Lecture and Workshops

By attending both the lecture and one of the workshops, you will gain a sophisticated and useful understanding of your own inner push towards researching and creating, and you will acquire skills which you will put to use in your job, in your life, in the next leg of your extraordinary journey.

For more information, see the Festival homepage.

Francesco Dimitri

Francesco Dimitri is a writer, speaker, and business storytelling consultant, originally from Southern Italy. 

He has written in many different forms (fiction, nonfiction, comics, cinema, digital media, essays, magazines), and worked for top corporate clients. His last book in Italian has been hailed by Il Corriere della Sera as the beginning of a new wave, and a film based on his first novel will be in Italian cinemas by the end of 2016. He lives in London, where he now writes in English. He is faculty member of the School of Life.