Tommaso Durante

• Globalisation
• Visual Imagery – Urban
• Social and Political Theory

Dr Tommaso Durante is an academic specialising in global imaginary. He is also an international award-winning visual artist. Tommaso makes regular and valuable contributions to the Global Compact Cities Programme’s visual communications and archives.

Tommaso moved from Italy to Australia in 2001 under a visa for distinguished talent for art. His artistic production deals with a wide range of media, from sculpture-installations to artists’ books. He has an extensive international exhibition record in public and private galleries and museums dating back to 1970s, which includes the creation of both permanent and temporary public artworks. His work is internationally represented in public and private collections. One of his most recent awards was the MCBA 2013 International Artists Book Award for Limes, a visual and philosophical journey across Aotearoa (The Land of the Long White Cloud) in New Zealand.

Tommaso is the author and Project Manager/Designer of The Visual Archive Project of the Global Imaginary, an online visual database that aims to contribute to our understanding of the processes of globalisation and how the global imaginary is symbolically and socially produced.

His academic research is located at the crossroad of global, urban and media studies, in the space between history and theory, and it addresses the global imaginary as a visual-ideological phenomenon through the perspective of aesthetics of change and the lens of social and political theory.

Tommaso’s research is associated with the Globalisation and Culture Program of the Global Cities Research Institute/Globalism Research Centre and the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Tommaso was the recipient of a fully funded Australian Postgraduate Research Award (2010-2013) on the basis of academic merit and research performance. He has recently worked as a Project Manager/Designer for designing innovative multimedia learning objects for Global Studies programmes to enhance student comprehension of globalisation concepts and facilitate inclusive online teaching (RMIT University, LTIF 2013).

His published academic work includes Visualizing and Interpreting Aesthetics of Global Change in Sydney and Melbourne (2013), Aesthetics of Change and Urban Sustainability in Melbourne: Between Global Ideologies, Material Processes and Social Imaginaries (2013), and Visual Culture and Globalization: The Visual Archive Project of the Global Imaginary (2014).

Dr Durante is based in Melbourne, Australia.