Team Members

Principal Investigator

Prof. Felicita Tramontana

Picture of Prof. Felicita Tramontana, PI of the HOLYLAB project

Before moving to Roma Tre, I was Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow (MSCA-IF-2014-EF, GA. 657118), at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance of Warwick University (2016-2018) and Eurias Junior fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2015-1016). Between 2010 and 2013 I was the Scientific coordinator (for the University of Palermo) of the research project (FIRB) “Beyond “Holy War”. Between 2009 and 2010, I was a researcher at the Oriental Institute of the Martin Luther University of Halle – Wittenberg (Germany). In 2008 I was awarded a PhD in Human Rights by the University of Teramo.

I am associate professor in Early Modern History at Roma Tre (Department of Political Science) and PI of the ERC-funded project HOLYLAB.

My main research interests are Mediterranean history and the social history of the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern period (1500-1800). Most of my research activity has been focused on Ottoman Palestine, with special attention to the history of Palestinian villages; I have written on religious conversions, changes in the distribution of the Christian population, rural mobility and Franciscans’ parishes in the area. More recently, I have worked on geographical mobility across the Mediterranean, networks and mobility infrastructures.

Research Team


Roma Tre University

Dr. Manuel Capomaccio

Picture of Dr. Manuel Capomaccio

Prior to joining Roma Tre University, I received my PhD in Asian, African, and Mediterranean Studies from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in 2022. I spent three months as a visiting PhD student at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (Lebanon) in 2019.

The aim of my doctoral dissertation was to pave the way for the preparation of a new critical edition of the Bulūġ al-ʾarab fī ʿilm al-ʾadab (“Reaching the Goal in the Study of Literature”), a late badīʿ treatise drafted by the Maronite archbishop Ğirmānūs Farḥāt (d. 1732). Meanwhile, I also published on the pedagogical simplification in the 18th-century Syriac and Arabic grammars.

My research interests are grounded in three main fields: Christian Arabic literature in the Ottoman period, pre-modern manuscript texts belonging to the Middle Arabic spectrum, and Arabic rhetorical tradition. Concurrently, I have acquired proficiency in the specialized disciplines of codicology, palaeography, and stemmatics, enriching my scholarly repertoire.


Dr. Rebecca Carnevali

Picture of Dr. Rebecca Carnevali

A trained visual and cultural historian, I specialise in the early modern period and printed communication and their analysis through the lens of economic and social history with a MA at the Warburg Institute in London.

My PhD project at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance of the University of Warwick, funded by a Wolfson Foundation Scholarship, explored the relationship between early modern Italian political life and cheap print.

My research interests combine the study of the financial mechanisms employed by bureaucracies and institutions to the purpose of gathering and circulating objects, such as paper-related items, with the reconstruction of the networks shaping urban trades from the social and relational viewpoint, with the aim of shedding light on the economic and organisational implications behind the functioning of complex polities. Over the years, I have also developed an expertise in the data analysis of pre-modern sources.


Dr. Mattia Corso

I am a social and cultural historian specialising in the history of religion in the early modern period.

I obtained my PhD in 2020 from the University of Padua, where my research focused on the study of lived religion and the transition from pre- to post-Tridentine Catholicism in the sixteenth-century Republic of Venice.

Through my work, I explored the intricate connections between the faithful, material objects of devotion, and the use of economic resources within local communities to support religious activities.

I have since published several articles on topics such as the reform of audience behaviour at Mass, the ritual practice of indulgences, and the significance of candles in religious rituals.


Dr. Antonio Iodice

My main research interests revolve around early modern European maritime risk management, trade, and mobility, with a specific focus on the Republic of Genoa and the Tyrrhenian area.

Prior to joining HolyLab, I worked as a post-doc in Economic History at the University of Genoa, where I obtained my second PhD through a bilateral agreement with the University of Exeter as part of the ERC AveTransRisk project led by Maria Fusaro. I am now an honorary research fellow at the University of Exeter. I was also involved in the Risky Business project led by Sabine Go (VU Amsterdam) and Giovanni Ceccarelli (Parma). I actively contributed to design, populate, and exploit the digital open access databases produced in these projects.


Dr. Andrea Selleri

Picture of Dr. Andrea Selleri

I am an assistant professor at the Department of English Language and Literature at Bilkent University in Ankara.

Prior to that, I was awarded a PhD in English and Comparative Literary Studies by the University of Warwick, and I worked for a few years as a freelance teacher, translator, and copy-editor.

I publish mostly on nineteenth-century British literature and intellectual history, but I range more broadly in adjacent fields.


Dr. Cristina Setti

Picture of Dr. Cristina Setti

An historian of ancient regime institutions and societies, I moved to Roma Tre within the ERC project HOLYLAB after some postdoctoral experiences at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where I was awarded my PhD in History in 2018 and where, inter alia, I collaborated to the digitalisation of the archival data about the account books of the Archivio Salviati.

My previous research concerns Venice and the Eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on the juridical and socio-economics relations and entaglements which involved its subjects in the Levantine and Adriatic areas, especially within the Grecophone islands and their coastal appendixes. Recently, I also began to analyse latest historiographical narrations about Venetian maritime dominions.

On these topics I drafted many conference papers and articles. My publications include the monography Una repubblica per ogni porto. Venezia e lo Stato da Mar negli itinerari dei Sindici inquisitori in Levante (secoli XVI-XVII) (Unicopli, Milano, 2021).


Italian-German Historical Institute (FBK-ISIG)

Dr. Claudio Ferlan

I am full-time researcher at the Italian-German Historical Institute (Bruno Kessler Foundation) in Trento – Italy, where I am also working as editor-in-chief of FBK Magazine.

Graduated in Law (1999) and in History (2003), PhD in Early Modern History (2006, University of Trieste), I am currently working on research project about food habits as essential features of the negotiation between individuals and social models in the missionary culture (16th-19th Century).

I am affiliated researcher at the Institute of Advanced Jesuit Studies (IAJS, Boston College). I have held fellowships and have been visiting Scholar in several Institutions: Alpen-Adria Universität (Klagenfurt), Karl-Franzens Universität (Graz), Max Planck Institute for Legal History (Frankfurt am Main), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), University of California Berkeley, and the IAJS.

I am the author, among others, of Storia delle missioni cristiane. Dalle origini alla decolonizzazione (2023), Venerdì pesce (2021), Sbornie sacre, sbornie profane (2018, German translation 2022), and I gesuiti (2015, Portuguese translation 2018).


Dr. Sandra Toffolo

I am a researcher at the Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico / Italian-German Historical Institute in Trento (Italy). My research focuses on mobility, space, and the circulation of people, objects, and ideas, with particular emphasis on early modern Italy and especially Venice.

My current book project focuses on foreign Jerusalem-bound pilgrims in Renaissance Venice. I am particularly interested in their local, national, and transnational networks, and in their role in the circulation of objects and ideas.

Prior to moving to the Italian-German Historical Institute in Trento, I have held positions and fellowships at, among other places, Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Florence, Italy), the University of St. Andrews (United Kingdom), the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours, France), and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (Italy). I received my PhD from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). I also studied at the universities of Nijmegen (The Netherlands), Florence, and Perugia.

Senior Staff

Advisory Board