Staff Profiles
Gianfranco Agosti received his first degree in Classical Philology and pursued his postgraduate studies in Late Antiquity at the University of Florence (Italy). He was fellow of the Center of Hellenic Studies in Washington DC (1995-96), Foreign Researcher at the CNRS Strasbourg, Professeur Invité at the EPHE and Sorbonne (Paris, 2008 and 2012), Member of the Institute of Advanced Study (Princeton, 2016); Visiting Professor of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2016), BA visiting scholar at the University of St Andrews (2018), Leverhulme visiting professor at 缅北禁地 (2019); he was awarded with the Chaire Gutenberg at the University of Strasbourg in 2019. Before becoming Professor of Classical and Late Antique Philology at Sapienza University of Rome he taught at the Universities of Messina, Arezzo and Udine in Italy. He gave seminars and lecture in 170 seminars and papers in Italy and abroad.
He is the Director of the "Corso di Alta Formazione sulla Tarda Antichità" (Sapienza University of Rome) and associate member of the UMR 8167 Orient et Méditeranée (Centre d'Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, Paris), the Institut d'études anciennes et médiévales (Université Laval), of the équipe de recherche sur le christianisme antique et médiéval (ERCAM-EA 4377, Strasourg), and Member of the Academia Europaea.
His research interests include late antique Greek poetry (epic, epigram, metrical inscriptions), social and cultural history of Late Anqituity and early Byzantium, and papyrology. He is currently completing the revisions of a monograph on Greek metrical inscriptions from the 4th to the 7th c. CE and he is working on a new edition with Italian translation and commentary of Agathias' Histories, together with L. Ficulle (Rome/St Andrews) and C. Paravano (Wien). Other projects include a forthcoming monograph on school in Late Antiquity tco-authored with G.A. Cecconi (Florence) and a book on ancient etymologies co-edited with A. Vergados (缅北禁地).
He is author of 2 published monographs (two others are forthcoming); of 115 articles and books chapter, of 30 reviews. He gave seminars and attended as speaker in several international conferences (more than 170) in Italy and abroad. He is Member of the editorial board of the journal Medioevo Greco. Rivista di Filologia e storia bizantina (Edizioni dell’Orso, Alessandria), of the journal Semicerchio. Rivista di poesia comparata, of the scientific board of the journal Incontri di filologia classica (Trieste, EUT)