The main goal of this project is to investigate out-of-equilibrium Cu-As alloys, i.e. 0-10 wt.% As in the range used in the transition period between Stone and Metal ages. The research protocol is made of several steps: equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium phase diagrams in the above mentioned range, evaluation of mechanical properties of Cu-As alloys in the most common metallurgical states (as-cast, annealed, cold-hardened, recrystallized), and estimation of the loss of As during metallurgical transformations (melting/casting, homogenisation and recrystallisation annealing) according to the number of iterations and of the treatment temperature and dwell time. The fulfilment of these objectives is of high importance for materials science applied to archaeology dealing with development and usage of this very first alloy produced by human kind. The applicant will acquire and share with the scientific community new knowledge in the production, thermomechanical treatment and consequent properties of the misknown arsenical bronzes. She will use her metallurgical experience and archaeological knowledge (both matured in the field of tin-bronzes) applied to production, treatment and analyses of arsenical bronze. The additional knowledge the applicant will obtain within the project is related to the domain of phase diagrams creation and the usage of DTA, DSC and XRPD, under the supervision of experienced researchers from inorganic chemistry and metallurgy. The project as a whole will provide for the first time: 1) out-of-equilibrium phase diagrams for the Cu-As system 2) determination of chemical, physical and mechanical properties of arsenical bronze in the range of 0-10 wt.% arsenic 3) a comprehensive overview on the actual loss of arsenic during metallurgical transformations. The proposed project constitutes an excellent career-springboard for the applicant, being then the sole expert on the usage of arsenical bronze in the field of European archaeometallurgy.

PATRIMONIVM aims at conducting the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary socio-economic study of the properties of the Roman emperors from Octavian/Augustus to Diocletian (44 BC – AD 284) using a complete documentary base for the entire Roman world. Imperial properties were extended throughout the empire and included residences, cultivated land, pastureland, woods, mines, quarries, luxury items and slaves. This immense richness was a key element for the maintenance of the position of supreme power, since the emperor could use it to carry out all sort of public expenditure and to confer benefactions to individuals and communities. Moreover, large imperial possessions (vast landed estates, quarries) had relevant local economic repercussions. Since their owner was both the head of the empire and a global economic player, we can trace a tendency to trans-regional uniformity in the patterns of exploitation and a positive effect on the economic and, in a certain way, cultural integration of peripheral areas. No major survey of the available documentation has been produced since the beginning of the 20th century and many questions about the acquisition and use of the properties remain unanswered. The project aims at filling this gap creating a powerful online relational database of all published sources; every record will contain geodata and will be related to separate databases of all known persons (administrators, peasants etc.), regions and bibliographic references. A multidisciplinary and comparative study, developed through the project’s rich scientific activity, will allow to understand the role of the properties as a structuring factor of Roman economy and as a vector of human mobility and socio-cultural transformation. Innovative hypotheses on imperial investments, the role of the emperor’s freedmen and other aspects will be tested. A series of five books, among which an authoritative history of the imperial properties, will disseminate the project’s results.

The RecRoad project aims to reconstruct the Roman road going from Aquileia, in the north-east of Italy, to Singidunum, on the Danube river. This was one of the main road axes of the Empire and it connected the Venetian area with the Pannonia Superior and the Danubian limes: the road was longer than 450 miles, passing through the Alps, it ran along the river Sava, crossing its course several times. The road's general layout can be followed in the itinerary sources but an attempt to accurately reconstruct the course of the road on the ground has never been tried before and may greatly improve our knowledge of the evolution of the territories that it crossed over the time. After an in-depth study of the original itinerary of the road, the project aims also at the analysis of the consequences of its construction on the landscape from different point of view (culture, settlement dynamics, religion, trade, …), so that better comprehension of the territorial and cultural connections, will be possible. To reach these goals, the project will consider and use all the sources and the new technologies avalaible to archaeologists, in a multi-disciplinary approach. All the collected and generated information will be geo-referenced and published in an online Atlas. The main output of the project will be an interactive atlas available online, where it will be possible to visualize the reconstructed route in its geographical context, the reliability degree of the individual segments and the sources that were identified with reference to the single stretch of the road to which they pertain. In addition, new strategies and initiatives for the protection and knowledge dissemination will be developed. For the first time, all the sources today avalaible to archaeologists will be used to identify the original track of a Roman road and to study the importance of the consequences that its presence had on the territory and on the way ancient people conceived the landscape where they lived.

Roman society is elitist by nature and is thus represented by most available sources. Roman imperial elites have been long investigated, however scholars usually focused only on the two extremes of elites, either the top level (elites employed in high imperial administration), or the bottom one (civic elites). No attention was devoted to investigating the existence of a “middle-elite”. The RIDERS project offers an innovative investigation of Roman imperial elites with the ambitious purpose of changing traditional models of interpretation, moving beyond a top-down approach (i.e. focusing on the top level) and a bottom-up one (i.e. focusing on the bottom level), by developing a ground-breaking middle-out approach. After over three decades since the last complete work devoted to equestrian officers, the RIDERS project re-addresses the entire corpus of the 2,500 equestrian officers currently known, to develop an innovative tool for an in-depth investigation of imperial middle-elites. By applying a multidisciplinary methodology, based on traditional prosopography integrated with sociological methods and supported by digital humanities, the RIDERS project will develop, as its main outcomes, the first database devoted to equestrian officers and the first monograph on imperial middle-elites. The ambition of the RIDERS project consists in applying also to elites the social concept of “middle”, usually employed only for the remaining part of society. Suggesting that even elites had a “middle”, not only a top or a bottom, will ambitiously contribute to improving our knowledge of Roman society, which was much more complex and variegated than studies have hitherto highlighted.

The last twenty years have seen the emergence of many different works inspired by the character Albertine from Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu. The Proustian figure evokes a surprising intertextuality across different genres, art forms and media including a poetry pamphlet and a verse novel by Anne Carson, a play by Colin Duckworth, a musical by Richard Nelson and Ricky Ian Gordon, a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, films by Chantal Akerman and Véronique Aubouy and novels by Jacqueline Rose, Angela Carter and Hélène Cixous. This cluster of works has not been previously studied. More interestingly, it offers a case of a cross-textual character appearing in alternative fictional worlds. At the same time, it fills the gaps of the strategic Proustian underrepresentation of Albertine in two ways: it either adapts the story in different genres and media or imagines a different destiny, ontology, pre/post history of the character. Examining Albertine’s metamorphoses into other fictional characters, narratives, and sociohistorical contexts, this project aims to trace the trajectory of this exemplary character thus making an important addition to the narratological and interdisciplinary study of character. At the same time, QUART puts forward the hypothesis that the Proustian changeable and fleeting figure has been chosen by artists and writers of the Francophone and Anglophone worlds because her ungraspable plurality encapsulates the potential of a queer figure of defiance. It therefore aims at conceptualizing her as a form of resistance at the intersection of sex, gender, race and class based on the hypothesis that Albertine as a queer figure assumes the ethical act of taking the risk of one’s desire. She transforms the trauma of exclusion into a viable alternative realm, where values are distributed otherwise than according to the hegemonic order. The project therefore examines how Albertine initiates renewed and renewable understandings of queerness.