Sofia Bianchi Mancini

Member of the Equal Opportunities Board

Sofia Bianchi Mancini is a Greek and Latin philologist. Sofia did her BA in Classics at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and in her final year she spent six months at the University of Tarragona Rovira I Virgili on an Erasmus exchange programme. She was awarded an MRes in Classical Studies from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and she just completed her PhD in Ancient History at the University of Erfurt with a research focus on the socio-political dimension of judicial curse tablets in Selinous and Athens.

Her research interests lie within politics and culture in ancient Greece and Rome, Greek and Latin poetic, prose, and philosophical texts, Greek and Roman oratory, archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient magic and religion, emotions in antiquity.

She is currently a Postdoc researcher on the group project A01 “Göttliches Eigentum. Spätantike und mittelalterliche Lösungen”.

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Research Project

Her project investigates how ownership is constructed and negotiated in selected philosophical and narrative texts of late first century A.D. Rome. The starting point of the overall study is the underlying assumption that gods own and are defined by all those material and non-material spaces, which writers textually assign to them. The questions that her work will seek to answer are the following: How are material and non-material spaces constructed and owned by the gods in literature? How well does the “narrative” construction of (spatial) ownership reflect into the real world? Is there an emotional dimension connected to divine ownership?

Activities

Publications

  • Bianchi Mancini, Sofia: "Narrating Divine Property: The Case of Sacred Groves in Statian Poetry", in: Annual of the Japanese Biblical Institute 49, 53–78 (forthcoming end of 2024 or beginning of 2025).
  • Bianchi Mancini, Sofia; Pérez Yarza, L.; Fogliazza, S. (eds.) (forthcoming 2025): The Roman Imperial Cult: Local Practices and the Reception of the Emperor, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Conference proceedings of the EASR 2023 panel (thematic issue): Bianchi Mancini, S.; Di Serio, C.; Fogliazza, S. (eds.): "Reaching the Superhuman: Ritual, Communication, and Materiality in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East", in: Religion in the Roman Empire, (forth.).
  • Bianchi Mancini, S., contributor in Nickel, R. _Lexikon der antiken Literatur_, 4. Auflage. Marburg: Tectum. (forth.).
  • Bianchi Mancini, S.; Dell’Isola, M. (eds.) Divine Property and Boundary Violation from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, (in preparation).
  • Bianchi Mancini, Sofia: “Metroac Cultic Practices and Curses: Sensorial Experiences during the Ritual Deposition of the defixiones from Mainz”, In: K. Waldner & A-I. Rassia (eds.), The Multi-Sensory Experience of Mystery Cults. Berlin: De Gruyter, (forth.).
  • Bianchi Mancini, S.; Gibson, H.; Schuck, D.; Vinzent, M. (eds.) (2024): Relating to Landed Property, Frankfurt: Campus.
  • Bianchi Mancini, Sofia (2024): “Gods’ Landed Property: Sacred Groves in Republican and Imperial Literature”, In: Bianchi Mancini, S., Gibson, H., Schuck, D., Vinzent, M. (eds.), Relating to Landed Property, Frankfurt: Campus.
  • Rüpke, J.; Bianchi Mancini, S. (2023): Antike Epik. Eine Einführung in hexametrische Großdichtung,  3., vollständig überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage, Marburg: Tectum (engl. trans. Ancient Epic Poetry, Baden-Baden: Tectum, forthcoming November 2024; it. trans. L'Epica Antica, Rome: Carocci, forthcoming 2025).
  • Bianchi Mancini, Sofia (2023): Review of T. Nowitzki, Antike Ritualmagie: Die Rituale der ägyptischen Zauberpapyri im Kontext spätantiker Magie, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2021, In: ARYS. Antigüedad: Religiones y Sociedades, 21, 584-87. DOI: 10.20318/arys.2023.7696.

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Lectures

  • German-Italian Bilateral Meeting "OROMA. Objekthaftigkeit der Religionen, Religiosität der Objekte im antiken Mittelmeerraum (I)" (March 2024): Paper Title: "L’agentività dei boschi sacri e delle foreste in Ovidio e Stazio", Villa Vigoni (Menaggio, Como).
  • Workshop “Community, Ritual and the Power of Memory: Past, Present and Future” (March 2023): Paper Title: “Divine Ownership as Cultural Memory: Its Perception and Transformation in Latin Poetry”, Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt (invited).
  • Summer school "Roman rituals: dynamics, topography and objects. Introduction to Roman religion through the prism of its materiality" (September 2023): Paper Title: "Manipulating the Sacred: Material Appropriation and the Hierarchisation of Gods", Rome.
  • Online Guest Lecture — “Classics for Breakfast”, University of Erfurt (Invited) Title: “A ‘Remedy’ to Monarchical Rule: The Creation of a New Identity in Lucan’s Book III”. (January 2022)
  • Online Guest Lecture — “Lampeter and Mid-Wales Branch Lecture Series”, University of Wales Trinity St. David, Lampeter (Invited) Title: “Cursing for Status and Power: Judicial Curse Tablets and Elite Distress in Sixth and Fifth Centuries BC Selinous”. (October 2021)

Full overview of all activities

Events

  • International Conference “Objects as a Lens on Group Formations in the Cities of the Roman Empire (1st-4th Centuries CE) – Closed Panel Session (with Prof. Laura Carnevale): “Property of Ritual Space”, University of Erfurt (Organisation in preparation since May 2022) (2024)
  • SFB Junior Researchers’ Career Workshop (with Dr. Agniezska Althaber, Dr. Helen Gibson, Dr. Jonathan Rinne, and Philipp Köncke), Augistinerkloster Erfurt (2023)
  • EASR 2023 — Open Panel (with Dr. Chiara di Serio and Dr. Silvia Fogliazza): “Communication Techniques in Ancient Mediterranean Ritual Practices: Establishing a Relation with the Superhuman”, University of Vilnius, Lithuania (Panel Accepted)
  • EASR 2022 — Closed Panel Session (with Dr. Maria Dell’Isola): “Boundary Violation Between Property and Freedom: Case Studies from Antiquity to the Middle Ages”, University College Cork, Ireland

Subprojects

A01 Divine property: Solutions from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Researcher