Durham University

Faculty Member, Classics and Ancient History

Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy

About

Having studied philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Bologna (1994-8) and the University of California, Berkeley (1998/99), in October 2001 I moved to England, Cambridge University (St. John’s College) to read for a Ph.D. in Classics (obtained in 2005). From October 2004 to August 2007 I was a Lumley Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge; during this period I also lectured courses in ancient philosophy at Cambridge and King’s College London. I joined the Department of Classics and Ancient History of Durham University in September 2007.

My research interests and teaching are focused on ancient philosophy, especially ancient dialectic and logic, ancient epistemology and scepticism, ancient discussions of determinism, fate and freedom, and ancient conceptions of memory and learning. My first book, Ancient Self-Refutation (Cambridge University Press 2010), is a comprehensive history and analysis of ancient self-refutation arguments from Democritus to Augustine, with a few glimpses at the medieval period. I am currently co-authoring two handbooks on ancient logic (one in Italian, for Laterza, and one in English, for Acumen Publishing), and writing a series of articles on ancient epistemology and scepticism and on petitio principii (for more details on my work in progress follow the link to my online CV on the left tab).

A long-term project is writing a monograph on ancient conceptions of memory, recollection and learning.

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