FORTY YEARS OF SEMITIC PHILOLOGY. STUDIES IN HONOUR OF RICCARDO CONTINI, OFFERED BY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES ON THE OCCASION OF HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

Maria Maddalena Colasuonno teaches Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of Milan and Judeo-Italian at the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples L’Orientale, focusing on Iranian influences on Ancient Hebrew (2023-2025, PRIN 2020), and an Israel Science Foundation fellow, working on Ancient Hebrew syntax (2021-2022, BIU). As an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and DAAD postdoc fellow, she investigated the pragmatics of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2018-2021, MLU Halle). Her publications cover Ancient and Modern Hebrew, Palestinian Arabic and Judeo-Italian.

Alfredo Criscuolo is a Researcher (RTD-B) at the University of Messina, where he teaches courses in Semitic Philology and Arabic Language. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici sul Vicino Oriente Antico, Nuova Serie Online. His research and publications span the fields of comparative Semitic lexicography, with a particular focus on the Northwest Semitic branch, and the textual history of Mandaean literature, with special attention to intertextual traditions.

Luca D'Anna has served as an Associate Professor of Arabic at the University of Naples L'Orientale since 2019, after teaching for three years at the Intensive Arabic Program at the University of Mississippi (USA). He focuses on Arabic dialects of the Eastern Maghreb (Tunisia and Libya), Judeo-Arabic dialects, and the history of the Arabic language, from a historical-typological perspective.

Raffaele Esposito is an Associate Professor of modern Jewish and Hebrew literatures and modern Hebrew language at the University of Naples L’Orientale. His research interests include contemporary Israeli fiction, Jewish literatures, and Jewish performing arts. His main publications concern Hebrew and Yiddish theatre. He also published in the fields of linguistics and translation studies. He is currently involved in a research project exploring dystopian narratives in world literatures.

Gianfrancesco Lusini, Full Professor of Ge‘ez and Amharic Languages and Literatures at the University of Naples L’Orientale, is editor-in-chief of Rassegna di Studi Etiopici. He coordinates the project “National Catalogue of Ethiopian Manuscripts in Italy” and serves as editor of the series “CaNaMEI Reports”. A fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2001–2002, Hamburg University), his publications include monographs and articles in the following fields: Ge‘ez philology, Byzantine literature, Ethiopian literature, Amharic language, and the history of Eritrea and Ethiopia from Late Antiquity to the modern times.

Mara Nicosia is a postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ERC project FragArist at the University of Padua. She was previously a postdoc on the ERC project Novel Echoes at Ghent University (2021–2023) and a British Academy Newton International Fellow at Durham University (2023–2025). She works on the intellectual history of Syriac speakers in Abbasid Iraq, with a focus on rhetoric and education in Syriac schools. In February 2026, she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for the project SEAT (Syriac Education, Abbasid Times), which begins in March 2027 at the University of Catania.