About me
I love wedges, cats, and montanara fritta.
Academic profile (for more info & projects, check my OSF webpage and/or my webpage ductuli vesuviani):
I am an Italian–German Hittitologist and historian of writing technologies, with a keen interest in Digital Humanities and the exploration of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the ancient world.
In the field of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, my research focuses on Hittite history, religion and administration. A former team member of the flagship project Das Corpus der hethitischen Festrituale at the University of Marburg and PI of a DFG-funded project on Hittite local cults at the University of Würzburg, I joined the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ in 2021, where I am currently leading a project on The art of the stage in Bronze Age Anatolia. Reconstructing Hittite festivals using texts, images and comparative cultural anthropological evidence together with Alessandra Gilibert (Venice) and Sebastiano Mannia (Palermo).
In the field of manuscript studies, I pursue an interdisciplinary approach to the study of writing technologies, combining codicology, palaeography and philology in a holistic historical and cross-cultural framework, and using computational methods for palaeographical analysis. Following groundbreaking studies in quantitative cuneiform palaeography and writing techniques for writing cuneiform on clay and wax tablets, in 2023 I launched the research initiative On the trail of the neverending manuscript, which explores the role of erasable writing technologies in manuscript cultures.
Driven by a genuine commitment to fostering collaboration between the university, educational and cultural institutions, I am dedicated to the public dissemination of research findings, particularly in schools and museums. My outreach activities include Cuneiform Labs – such as those held in various educational contexts in Baghdad, Würzburg, and Naples – and a series of digital resources, the Cuneiform Tidbits.
CV & publication list
CV available here
Publications (list & pdf) available here