Dr Valentina Mignosa

My research concerns the epigraphic landscape of ancient Sicily during the archaic and classical periods. I am interested in how writing was acquired by the island’s indigenous populations. My PhD addressed how mobility affected social development and urban landscape of Syracuse from its foundation in 734 to the beginning of the 5th century BCE. More recently I have developed a keen interest in digital humanities.

As an historian and epigrapher with expertise in Sicilian archaic and classical history,my contribution to the Crossreads project will involve creating an inventory of the inscriptions of the archaic period in Greek, Sikel and Elymian that have yet to be included in the I.Sicily database. This will provide updated editions for the next phase of the project. I was an undergraduate at the University of Catania, and I obtained a master’s degree in Ancient Civilisations: Literature, History and Archaeology at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where I went on to do my PhD research in Greek History. Since then, I have updated and translated the Axon database of Greek inscriptions into English at the University of Venice. I was awarded a scholarship at Fondation Hardt in 2020 to work on a section of the monograph from my PhD thesis.

Recent publications:

Mignosa, V. (2018), ‘Dall’alfabetizzazione alla permeabilità selettiva. Per una proposta di lettura della documentazione epigrafica del Mendolito’, Incontri di filologia classica XVII, 215-242.

Mignosa, V. (2020), ‘When War Changes a City. Fortifications and Urban Landscapes in Tyrant-Ruled Syracuse’. In M. Jonasch (ed.), The fight for Greek Sicily: Society, Politics and Landscape, Oxford, Oxbow Books, 242-270.

Tribulato, O., Mignosa, V. (forthcoming), ‘Marking identity through graphemes? A new look at the Sikel arrow-shaped alpha’, in P. Boyes, P. Steele (eds.), Exploring the Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Systems, Oxford, Oxbow Books.