Principal Investigator

Antonella Ghignoli is Full Professor in Paleography at Sapienza University of Rome, Department of ‘History Anthropology Religions Art History, Media and Performing Arts’ (SARAS), after having been Assistant Professor of Latin Paleography, Codicology and Diplomatics at the University of Viterbo-La Tuscia and at the University of Florence. She has authored several books and articles, and some are downloadable here. Her main fields of interest include, among others, documentary writings from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, charters of rulers and literacy in early medieval Europe, textual criticism and critical edition of documentary records, methodology of history and research methodologies in Paleography and Diplomatics. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7399-055X.

E-mail: antonella.ghignoli at uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Latin palaeography
  • Diplomatics (late antique and early medieval)
  • Literacy and written culture in late antiquity and early middle ages

Senior Staff operating at Sapienza Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering (DIAG) as Detached Research Unit of the Project NOTAE

Prof. Tiziana Catarci is the Leader of the Detached Research Unit of the Project NOTAE at the Department DIAG. She has main research interests in theoretical and user oriented aspects of information access, user interfaces, usability, digital libraries, e-learning, cooperative information systems, and data management. She has been for several years the vice-rector of Sapienza for ICT and she is currently the Head of the Department DIAG. His current h-index is 39. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3578-1121.

E-mail: catarci at diag.uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Coordination of the user interaction design process for the NOTAE system
  • Data visualization techniques

Prof. Massimo Mecella is a full professor in Engineering in Computer Science at the Sapienza Department DIAG; he is conducting research in the fields of software architectures, information systems, distributed middleware and service oriented computing, mobile and pervasive computing, process management, data and process mining, big data analytics, advanced interfaces and human-computer interaction, focusing on smart applications, environments and communities. He is author of about 170 papers (h-index = 36). He has been/is currently involved in several European and Italian research projects. He regularly acts as EC reviewer for project proposals and projects, and expert of EIT – European Institute for Innovation and Technology. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9730-8882.

E-mail: mecella at diag.uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Analysis and design of the NOTAE software system
  • Software architecture of the NOTAE system

Prof. Francesco Leotta (PhD in Engineering in Computer Science) has currently a Tenure Track Assistant Professorship at the Sapienza Department DIAG. He has main research interests in smart environments and cyber-physical systems, including cultural heritage sites. He focuses in particular on the application of machine learning and data mining techniques in such scenarios. During his research activity, he has been collaborating to different EU research projects. His current h-index is 12. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9216-8502.

E-mail: leotta at diag.uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Methods, techniques and development of the NOTAE system
  • Pattern mining applied to NOTAE symbol repository
  • Computer vision applied to graphic symbols
  • Data management techniques
  • Advanced user interfaces

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Junior Staff

Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr. Nina Sietis . After graduating in ‘Filologia, Letterature e Storia del Mondo Antico’ at Sapienza Università di Roma (2013) with a dissertation focussing on greek palaeography, she obtained her PhD at the same University by defending a thesis entitled “La produzione manoscritta nei milieux studiti tra i secoli IX e X” (2016). During her PhD she joined the team directed by prof. Daniele Bianconi for the FIRB project ‘Codices Graeci Antiquiores’. In 2016 she was awarded a scholarship for the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and then worked together with the team of the ‘Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams’ (http://www.dbbe.ugent.be), supervised by prof. Kristoffel Demoen. She is member of the ‘Associazione Italiana dei Paleografi e Diplomatisti. Nina Sietis joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.07.2018. Currently she is a fixed-term Assistant Professor in Paleography at University of Cassino and Southern Lazio. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9242-3921.

Email: nina.sietis at unicas.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Greek Paleography
  • Documentary papyrology
  • Codicology

Dr. Maria Boccuzzi. After graduating in ‘Beni archivistici e librari’ at University of Bari (2013) she obtained her PhD in Palaeography at the same University by defending a thesis entitled I fondamenti materiali della tradizione testuale di Cipriano: la tarda antichità (2017). She collaborated on the project IMAI ‘Inscriptiones Medii Aevi Italiae’ (Research Unit of Bari, directed by prof. Paolo Fioretti). She is member of the ‘Associazione Italiana dei Paleografi e Diplomatisti’ since 2019 and currently member of the Board of the Association. She is the author of some papers in latin palaeography, focusing on the so called African uncial script, on the female written culture in late antiquity, and on the manuscript transmission of Cyprian’s works. Maria Boccuzzi joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.07.2019. She currently works as an archivist at the State Archive of Rome. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4128-9600.

E-mail: mireboccuzzi at gmail.com

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Latin palaeography (Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages)
  • Late Antique literacy

Dr. Anna Monte. She graduated in Classics at the Università degli Studi di Udine with a thesis in Papyrology and she worked from 2010 until 2017 as Research Assistant at the digitization project of the Berlin Papyrus Collection (Berliner Papyrusdatenbank). She obtained her PhD degree at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2018, discussing a thesis focused on the edition of hitherto unpublished Greek papyri from the Berlin Collection (documents, literary and medical texts). She is deeply interested in exploring linguistic and material issues from everyday-life of Greco-Roman-Byzantine Egypt, especially by editing and analyzing documentary and medical papyri. Anna Monte joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.07.2019. She is currently a fixed-term Assistant Professor in Papyrology at the University of Udine (Dipartimento di Studi umanistici e del Patrimonio Culturale) and in 2024 she won a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship Global with the project RECLEAN: Exploring the Relationship between Climate, Environment, and Health in Antiquity through the Papyri from Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Egypt . ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-559X.

Email: anna.monte at uniud.it

Key aspects of activity:

  • Documentary papyrology
  • History of Roman and Byzantine Egypt
  • History of Ancient Medicine

Dr. Zahra Ziran. After graduating in ‘Information Engineering’ at the University of Guilan (2012) with a dissertation focusing on forecasting undesirable weather conditions using Data Mining techniques, she obtained her PhD at the University of Florence(DINFO) by defending a thesis entitled “Deep learning-based object detection models applied to document images” (2020). During her PhD, she worked at AI Lab under the supervision of Prof.Simone Marinai. Her field of research interest is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Within AI, she is interested in problems related to Document Analysis , machine learning, data mining, and graph neural network. Zahra Ziran joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.07.2020. She is currently Post-Doc Research Fellow at DIAG. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3529-7380.

Email: zahra.ziran at uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Document Image Analysis
  • Historical Text Recognition and classification
  • Deep learning

Dr. Livia Briasco obtained her Bachelor’s degree in “History, Anthropology, History of Religions” with a thesis in latin diplomatics at La Sapienza Università di Roma (2015) and then her Master’s degree in “Historical sciences: medieval history and palaeography” at the same university (2017) with a thesis in greek palaeography. For her merits through the Master’s program, she was awarded the title of “Laueato eccellente” from La Sapienza (2018). In 2021 she obtained her PhD in greek paleography defending a dissertation entitled “La produzione libraria di lusso nella piena età comnena (1100-1180): tre case-studies tra sperimentazione e mimesi grafica”. For this research, in 2019-2020 she was awarded a Dissertation Grant from the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at the Hellenic College Holy Cross (Brookline, Massachusetts). In 2022 she obtained a master’s degree in Library Science at the Vatican School of Library Science. Livia Briasco joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.09.2021. She currently works as a librarian at Sapienza University of Rome. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8589-7640.

Email: livia.briasco at uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Greek and Latin Paleography
  • Diplomatics
  • Medieval History

Dr. Aneta Skalec. After graduating both in archaeology with specialisation in papyrology and epigraphy and in law with specialisation in Roman and ancient laws at the University of Warsaw (2010) she obtained her PhD in Juridical Papyrology at the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Warsaw by defending her thesis entitled Prawo sąsiedzkie w świetle papirusów z Egiptu grecko-rzymskiego (The neighbourhood law in the light of the papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt) (2016). Since 2015 she is a coordinator of the Polish-Italian cooperation within the Warsaw Mummy Project and since 2017 a member of the Gebelein Archaeological Project. From 2017 to 2019 she was an Associated Professor in Roman Law at the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa. She is the author of several papers in papyrology and Egyptology, focusing on the questions that found their reflection both in papyrological and archeological sources. Aneta Skalec joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.07.2022. She is currently PI of the “Ptolemaic Pathyris Project – interdisciplinary research on the urban layout and domestic architecture of the town“, funded by the Polish National Research Center (Narodowe Centrum Nauki). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9572-9029.

E-mail: anetaskalec at gmail.com

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Juridical papyrology
  • Documentary papyrology
  • History of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt

Dr. Marta Marucci is an early-career researcher in Digital Humanities. She studied Classics at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and then obtained her PhD at the University of Basilicata (2022). Her PhD thesis consists in a new critical edition with Italian translation and commentary of Theodoridas of Syracuse’ Epigrams. In 2022 she was awarded a scholarship from ‘Istituto italiano per la storia antica’ of Rome, which aimed to create and insert into the Epigraphic Database Roma (http://www.edr-edr.it) several digital editions of Greek inscriptions found in Rome. Her fields of research include Textual Criticism and Digital Humanities. Marta Marucci joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.09.2022. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7691-2044.


E-mail: marta.marucci@uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Digital Humanities
  • Philology
  • Epigraphy

Dr. Lucia C. Colella. After graduating in ‘Filologia, letterature e civiltà del mondo antico’ at the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ (2013), she obtained her PhD in Roman History at the same University with a dissertation on the Town Council of Arsinoe in the 3rd century AD (2019). She was a postdoctoral fellow in the project PLATINUM, ERC StG 2014 636983 (2019–2022), within which she has studied Latin and Graeco-Latin legal documents from Roman Egypt, with a focus on wills. She has worked on published and unpublished papyri, especially on documents from the Roman era. Her research interests involve administration and everyday life in Egypt. Lucia C. Colella joined the ERC project NOTAE on 01.11.2022. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0132-4483.


E-mail: luciaconsuelo.colella@uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Roman History
  • Papyrology
  • History of Roman Law
  • Juridical Papyrology

Dr. Silvestro Veneruso joined the team in 2020 as PhD student and earned his Doctorate in Engineering in Computer Science at the Sapienza Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering during his research activity in the NOTAE project. His research is mainly focused on Smart Space Automation, providing in particular solution that are the crossroad between artificial intelligence and Human-Computer Interaction. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2164-5954.

Email: veneruso at diag.uniroma1.it

Key aspects of activity in the project:

  • Analysis and Design of the NOTAE system
  • SW Architecture of the NOTAE system
  • SW Development of the NOTAE system

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Associated Junior Staff

Postdoctoral Researchers and Students

Dr. Lauren S. Ferro is Ph.D. student of Interaction Design at Sapienza University of Rome. She is currently undertaking her second Ph.D. on cybersecurity in the school of Engineering and Information Technology at Sapienza University of Rome. Her first Ph.D. was completed at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University in Melbourne, Australia and focused on player profiling and modeling. She is an active researcher in the area of HCI and user-centered design and has authored several books on game development. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4064-8218

Key aspects of her research:

  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human Factors
  • Cybersecurity
  • User-Centered Design
  • Game and Gamification design and development

Dr. Eleonora Bernasconi graduated in Management Engineering and joined the team in 2020; she earned her Doctorate in Engineering in Computer Science at the Sapienza Department of Computer Control, and Management Engineering during her collaboration with the project NOTAE. In 2018 she dealt with Deep Learning and Computer Vision at the Italian Institute of Statistics. Her research is focused on knowledge extraction and image processing applied to the challenging field of Cultural Heritage. She is currently a fixed-term Assistant Professor at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro”. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3142-3084

Key aspects of activity her research related to the project:

  • Definition and exploration of the NOTAE Knowledge Graph
  • Data analytics in NOTAE

Alessandra Tommasini earned a Bachelor’s degree in Management Engineering in 2021 at Sapienza University of Rome. She is currently a Master student in Engineering in Computer Science at the Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering “Antonio Ruberti” of Sapienza University of Rome.  

Email: tommasini.1883449 at studenti.uniroma1.it

Key aspects of her activity related to the project:

  • Web Design of the NOTAE system (adjunct)

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Academic Researchers in Cooperation and Collaboration

Prof. Teresa De Robertis

Full Professor in Palaeography at the University of Florence. Member of the Bureau of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine. The list of her publications and her CV are available here.

Email: teresa.derobertis at unifi.it

Key aspects of her research related to the project:

  • Latin Palaeography
  • Ancient and New Roman Cursive

Prof. Stefano Zamponi (16 May 1949 – 15 June 2024)

Full Professor and then Emeritus in Paleography at the University of Florence, after teaching many years at the Universities of Trieste and Padua. Chair of the Comité International de Paléographie latine from 2005 to 2015, President of the “Ente Nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio” from 2010 to 2022 and then Honorary President of the same institution until his untimely passing on 15 June 2024. Internationally renowned, Stefano Zamponi has been one of the most important scholar in Latin Paleography. Further details, also about his publications, are available here.

Key aspects of his research related to the project:

  • Latin Palaeography
  • Ancient and New Roman Cursive
  • Latin Abbreviations

Prof. Lucio Del Corso

Associate Professor in Papyrology at University of Salerno. The list of his publications, his curriculum vitae and research projects are available here. Several publications are downloadable on his Academia.edu account. Prof. Del Corso is the PI of the project Greek and Latin Literary Papyri from Graeco-Roman and Late Antique Fayum (4th BC- 7th AD): Texts, Contetxs, Readers (PRIN 2017), one of the related initiatives of the ERC project NOTAE. He is also member of the Scientific Board of the Book Series Graphic Symbols, Written Words (Publisher: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome), which hosts the main outputs of the project NOTAE, among other research monographs on pragmatic literacy and written culture of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

Key aspects of his research related to the project:

  • Greek Papyrology
  • Greek Epigraphy
  • Ancient History

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Former Team Members as Postdoctoral Researchers

2018-2019

Dr. Loreleï Vanderheyden. Key aspects of activity: Documentary papyrology; History of Late Antique Egypt; Coptic and Greek papyrology.

Dr. Andrea Antonio Verardi. Key aspects of activity: Late Antiquity and Early Medieval History; Church History

Former associated collaborators

2020-2021

Laura Cardinale, undergraduate in “Historical Sciences” (Master degree, curriculum in Medieval History) at Sapienza University of Rome. Key aspects of activity: updating and processing of the bibliographical data of the NOTAE project.