Sofia Bianchi Mancini

Member of the Mid-level-represantation

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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A picture of Sofia Bianchi Mancini.

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

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
Lectures
  • 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

 

Publications

  • In preparation: Bianchi Mancini, S. and Dell’Isola, M. (eds.) Divine Property and Boundary Violation from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
  • 2024 Bianchi Mancini, S. “Gods’ Landed Property: Sacred Groves in Republican and Imperial Literature”, in S. Bianchi Mancini, H. Gibson, D. Schuck and M. Vinzent (eds.), Relating to Landed Property. Frankfurt: Campus.
  • 2024 Bianchi Mancini, S. “Metroac Cultic Practices and Curses: Sensorial Experiences during the Ritual Deposition of the defixiones from Mainz”, in K. Waldner and A-I. Rassia (eds.), The Multi-Sensory Experience of Mystery Cults. Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • 2024 Bianchi Mancini, S., Gibson, H., Schuck, D., Vinzent, M. (eds.) Relating to Landed Property. Frankfurt: Campus.
  • 2023/2024 Rüpke, J. and Bianchi Mancini, S. Antike Epik, 3rd ed. Marburg: Tectum.
  • Forthcoming end of 2023 T. Nowitzki, Antike Ritualmagie: Die Rituale der ägyptischen Zauberpapyri im Kontext spätantiker Magie, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2021, in ARYS. Antigüedad: Religiones y Sociedades.
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Teaching

  • Apr 2023 – Jul 2023 MA Course: “Ancient Magic and its Afterlife” — University of Erfurt, Department of Religious Studies
  • Oct 2022 – Jan 2023 BA Course: “Gender and Violence in Ancient Magic” — University of Erfurt, Department of Religious Studies
  • Apr 2022 – Jul 2022 BA Course: “Alternatives to Roman Religion: Conflict and Hybridity in Ancient Polytheism” — University of Erfurt, Department of Religious Studies
  • Oct 2021 – Jan 2022 BA and MA Course: “Magic in the Ancient World” — University of Erfurt, Department of Religious Studies
  • Oct 2019 – Jan 2020 MA Course (with Prof. Dr. Katharina Waldner): “Ancient Magic in Ancient and Modern Theories on Religion” — University of Erfurt, Department of Religious Studies

Subprojects

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

Researcher