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, S., Dell'Isola, M. (eds.) Divine Property and Boundary Violation from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, (in preparation for Civiltà e Religioni).
  • Bianchi Mancini, S. (forthcoming 2025) Legal Curses and Politics in Archaic and Classical Sicily, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Under contract)
  • Bianchi Mancini, S.; Pérez Yarza, L.; Fogliazza, S. (eds.) (forthcoming 2025) The Roman Imperial Cult: Local Practices and the Reception of the Emperor, London: Palgrave Macmillan. (Under contract) 
  • Pérez Yarza, L., Herrera Rando, J., Bianchi Mancini, S. "Bilingual Phenomena and Cultural Interactions in the Latin West", in L. Pérez Yarza, J. Herrera Rando and S. Bianchi Mancini (eds.), One Cult, Multiple Cultures: Multilingualism and Religion in Western Roman Inscriptions, Series Diglossi@, Universités Nouvelle-Aquitaine éditions. 
  • Pérez Yarza, L., Herrera Rando, J., Bianchi Mancini, S. (eds.) (forthcoming 2025) One Cult, Multiple Cultures: Multilingualism and Religion in Western Roman Inscriptions, Series Diglossi@, Universités Nouvelle-Aquitaine éditions. Open access. (Under contract) 
  • Conference proceedings of the EASR 2023 panel (thematic issue): Bianchi Mancini, S.; Di Serio, C.; Fogliazza, S. (eds.) (forthcoming 2025): "Reaching the Superhuman: Ritual, Communication, and Materiality in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East", in: Religion in the Roman Empire. 
  • Bianchi Mancini, S. (forthcoming 2025): "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. 
  • Nickel, R., Hogenmüller, B. (eds.) (2025) in collaboration with Bianchi Mancini, S., Nickel, J. Lexikon der antiken Literatur, 4th ed., fully revised, Baden-Baden: Tectum. 
  • Bianchi Mancini, S. (2024): "Narrating Divine Property: The Case of Sacred Groves in Statian Poetry", in: Annual of the Japanese Biblical Institute 49, 53–78.
  • 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

  • Celtic Conference in Classics 2025 –– Open Panel (with Dr. Charlotte Spence and Dr. Julia Kretschmer): "The Epigraphic Evidence of 'Marginal' Groups in the Graeco-Roman World", University of Coimbra, Portugal (panel accepted)
  • FIEC 2025 –– Closed Double Panel (with Prof. Dr. Jörg Rüpke): "Texts and the Formation of Religious Networks in the Roman Empire", Wroclaw, Poland (panel accepted) 
  • EASR 2024 –– Closed Panel (with Dr. Giorgio Ferri): "Summumque munus homini datum arbores silvaeque intellegebantur (Plin. NH. 12.1.1). Roman Religion, Nature, and Environmental Crises", University of Gothenburg, Sweden (2024)
  • Celtic Conference in Classics 2024 –– Open Panel (with Dr. Lorena Pérez Yarza and Dr. Silvia Fogliazza): "Divine Renegotiation through the Lens of the Imperial Cult", University of Cardiff, Wales (2024)
  • 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 (2024)
  • 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 (2023)

Subprojects

A01 Ambiguous Property: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Principal Investigator