Valentina Cambruzzi

Academic Career

She graduated in Historical and Philological Studies in 2016 at the University of Trento (Italy). Her BD Thesis title "EVNVCV nel teatro di Thubursicu Numidarum: la maschera pantomimica della commedia di Terentius Afer. Il teatro nella società romana e il culto del dio Attis in Africa Settentrionale" (engl.: "EVNVCV in the Thubursicu Numidarum theatre: the pantomimic mask of Terentius Afer's comedy. Theatre in Roman society and the cult of the god Attis in Northern Africa") highlights her interest in working with various kinds of evidence, from literary to epigraphic to archaeological. Her supervisors were Prof. G. Ieranò, Prof. S. Camporeale and Prof.ssa M. Raaijmakers De Vos.

She continued her education and graduated cum laude in 2020 in Classics (Ancient Languages and Literatures and Ancient History) at the University of Padova (Italy). 

Her MD thesis inspected the self-representation of the Seleukids in the Hellenistic Mesopotamian documents, with a focus on how royal titles changed over time from the Wars of the διάδοχοι to the reign of Antiochus I Soter and on the importance of the cross-cultural contaminations in Seleukid Mesopotamia. The dissertation title, Reflections of Seleucid kingship in contemporary documents, reflects a change in her research interests from Africa to Mesopotamia, still maintaining an interdisciplinary approach. Her supervisors were Dr. S. Gaspa and Prof. F. Raviola.

Her interests focus on the Seleukid empire, namely the construction of their identity as a two-way process that includes internal and external input. More generally, her curiosity concerns the continuity of power in the Ancient Near East in the first millennium BC.

Dissertation Project

Her dissertation project, Seleukid royal identity and representation: literary and archaeological evidence in a glocal perspective, intends to investigate how the Seleukids used a web of connections with local communities of distinct cultures and traditions to build a new, shared identity. The aim is to work with languages, traditions, and various categories of evidence from various areas and epochs to demonstrate that the royal image of the Seleukid is a unicum in the Ancient Near Eastern as in Greek Hellenistic history. Relevance will be given to the royal titles, which are fundamental vessels of political thought in the Ancient Near Eastern tradition, as a partial development of the MD dissertation work. Her supervisors are Prof. R. Rollinger and Prof. R. Strootman.

Miscellanea

Valentina’s mother tongue is Italian, and she speaks English and German. She has a basic knowledge of French and Spanish. She has studied Latin and Ancient Greek and is learning Akkadian. 

Outside of the DK, Valentina is interested in the development of societal groups in mountainous regions, above all her birthplace, Provincia di Belluno, through cultural and political exchange with similar regions.