The goal of this section is to briefly highlight the work of outstanding early-career researchers working on the history of philosophy, focusing particularly (yet not exclusively) on medieval philosophy.
Matilde Berti
March 2023 – For March, let me introduce you to yet another promising Italian scholar working abroad! Matilde Berti is a PhD Student in Classics at Durham University (UK), with Prof. Phillip Horky and Prof. Anna Marmodoro as supervisors. She has been awarded an AHRC studentship via the Northern Bridge Consortium (NBCDTP) in October 2021. Matilde currently works on Early Greek philosophy and Plato within the framework of her doctoral project ‘The Relation of Parts and Wholes in Plato’. Her dissertation traces the roots of Plato’s account of a variety of relations between constituent parts and resulting entities, contained within previous Greek philosophy (i.e., cosmology, physics, medicine, and metaphysics). She aims to determine the Presocratic building blocks that shape the Platonic notions of ‘Part’. ‘All’, and ‘Whole’, thus enhancing the understanding of both Platonic and Presocratic Metaphysics.
read more
Leonardo Chiocchetti
February 2023 – Leonardo Chiocchetti is a PhD student at the Munich School of Ancient Philosophy, LMU-Munich (Germany). He is currently working under the supervision of Professor Christof Rapp. His thesis deals with the philosophical roots of ancient Greek grammar, focusing on the work of Apollonius Dyscolus and the Scholia to the Grammatical Handbook. Leonardo aims to show that ancient grammar was influenced not only by Stoic ontology and philosophy of language but also by other Hellenistic schools. In Apollonius’ case, many of his epistemological, semantical, and logical tenets seem to stem from a Peripatetic framework rather than a Stoic one. With this syncretistic background in mind, several grammatical texts which are philosophically dense become easier to interpret.
read more
Zhenyu Cai
January 2023 – To inaugurate 2023, let’s go to China with Zhenyu Cai! Zhenyu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Peking University. Zhenyu’s main research interest is Islamic philosophy. He primarily focuses on Avicenna’s philosophy of mind and metaphysics, with a specific interest in the reception and criticisms of Avicenna’s philosophy in the post-Avicennian tradition.
read more
Giuseppe Colonna
December 2022 – For our small portrait #7 – and before 2022 ends – meet Giuseppe Colonna! Giuseppe is a PhD Candidate at the University of Oxford. He works on a thesis about Being in Time in Simplicius, under the direction of Cecilia Trifogli (All Souls College, Oxford). Simplicius, one of the greatest Neoplatonic commentators of Aristotle, tries to solve some problems within the Aristotelian account of being in time. Aristotle gives some criteria to distinguish things in time (concrete things) and things not in time (heavens and souls). However, he does not precise the essential feature that distinguishes the former from the latter, in other words, what the real significance of being in time is. Giuseppe’s research aims to explore Simplicius’ solutions to this problem and to assess how this contributes to the understanding of the nature of time within metaphysics.
read more
Laura Busetto
November 2022 – The small portrait #6 features the work of Laura Busetto. Laura is a PhD Student at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (France) and, simultaneously, at the Fondazione San Carlo in Modena (Italy). She did her undergraduate studies at the Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy), where her interest in the medieval world began. Initially, she worked on medieval female thought – a topic that remains one of her primary interests.
read more
Taylor Pincin
October 2022 – For this month, our section goes all the way to the US to highlight the work of Taylor Pincin. Taylor is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Texas Austin, where she is working on her dissertation Being One and Being Prior in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Her project has two main goals: first, to develop and defend a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s priority in being. Taylor argues that in order to understand priority in being, we need to appreciate, and further develop, the link that Aristotle and his predecessors saw between Being and Oneness.
read more
Francesca Galli
September 2022 – The Small Portrait #4 is devoted to Francesca Galli. Francesca is currently a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Medieval literature and philology at Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano). She is particularly interested in the overlaps between Medieval sciences and literature, in Mendicant preaching and also in the text-image relationship. In September 2022, thanks to the generous support of the Swiss National Science Foundation, she will start at the University of Zurich a four-year project on the ‘hybrid’ uses of optics in the XIII century.
read more
Jonathan Greig
July 2022 – The Small Portrait #3 highlights the work of Jonathan Greig. Jonathan is a postdoctoral research fellow based at KU Leuven (Belgium) – supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) – working on the influence of Neoplatonism and late antique Aristotelian commentators in Byzantium.
read more
David Anzalone
June 2022 – David is a PHD Candidate at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland, where he works on his thesis “Plato as seen by Aristotle, as seen by Medieval Commentators on the Metaphysics between the 1230s and the 1350s” with the generous support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (doc.CH grant).
read more
Lorenzo Giovannetti
May 2022 – Lorenzo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee (ILIESI) of the Italian Research Council (CNR). He earned his Ph.D. from the Tor Vergata University of Rome and Rome Tre University with a thesis titled “Eidos and Dynamis. The Intertwinement of Being and Logos in Plato’s Thought.”
read more
IPM Monthly 