Alessandro Maria Bruni

Alessandro Maria Bruni is a Full Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Naples "L'Orientale," where he is affiliated with the Department of Literary, Linguistic and Comparative Studies. His academic work focuses on Slavic philology with special emphasis on Old Church Slavonic texts and their transmission.

Professor Bruni has made major scholarly contributions to Palaeoslavistics with a special focus on textual criticism, Cyrillic palaeography and codicology, Historical linguistics, as well as on the comparative study of manuscript traditions in different languages. His research has extensively explored the Byzantine and Slavonic Corpus of the Homilies (λόγοι) of Gregory of Nazianzus, including three monographs and several papers in international peer-reviewed journals. He has also developed new approaches in the study of the Slavonic translations of the Old Testament that demonstrate their text-critical value for philological inquiry into the Septuagint and the Hebrew Bible, involving comprehensive investigation of Slavonic manuscript traditions combined with Greek originals and other Eastern Christian traditions like Old Georgian.

Professor Bruni's work shows a consistent focus on the textual transmission of Old Church Slavonic writings, particularly examining how ancient traits of Old Church Slavonic vocabulary and syntax appear in manuscripts from the 14th-16th centuries, challenging the traditional focus on earlier Glagolitic and Cyrillic manuscripts from the 10th-11th centuries. His research aims to re-evaluate the literary patrimony of Slavia Christiana through more comprehensive examination of textual transmission.

His scientific achievements have been recognized with prestigious awards including

• Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (2006-2008)
• Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2012-2013)
• Visiting Scholar status at the University of Oxford (2021-2022)
• Election as a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2025)

As Principal Investigator of the PRIN 2022 research project "The Transmission of Old Church Slavonic Texts" since 2023, Professor Bruni leads a significant research initiative funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. He also serves on editorial boards of several scholarly journals including PALAEOBULGARICA and SDVIG/SHIFT, and has supervised research fellows including KALASHNIKOVA OLGA and STANKOV ROSTISLAV ALEXANDROV.

Professor Bruni is actively involved in academic leadership, having been elected program chair for "The Transmission of Old Church Slavonic Texts" conference scheduled for June 2025, further demonstrating his standing as a leading scholar in the field of Slavic philology and textual studies.