Gabriella Pironti

Gabriella Pironti is Professor (Director of Studies) of Religious Anthropology of the Ancient Mediterranean at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE, PSL University) in Paris, a position she has held since 2016. Previously she lectured and researched at the University of Naples Federico II (2008–2016), was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Liège (2007–2008), and served as ATER at both EPHE and EHESS (2004–2007).

Education:

• PhD, Section V (Religious Sciences), EPHE (2005)

Research Interests

Her work situates itself at the intersection of religious anthropology, classical philology, and archaeology of religion, with an enduring focus on ancient Greek polytheism. She explores how divine figures are constructed and negotiated between literary representation and cult practice, interrogating themes such as divine sovereignty, gendered aspects of the gods, the semantics of divine names and epithets, and the ritual contexts that shape religious experience. Her investigations range from the cosmogonic narratives of Hesiod to the localized cults of Aphrodite, and from the Olympian family dynamics to the comparative entanglements between Greek and Roman pantheons.

Publication Trajectory

Across more than fifteen years her scholarly output charts a steady engagement with the anthropology of Greek religion. Monographs such as Between Heaven and War: Figures of Aphrodite in Ancient Greece (2007) and the collaborative The Hera of Zeus (2016; English 2022) anchor broader edited collections like The Gods of Homer (2016, 2017, 2021) that re-examine Homeric poetry as a site of religious reflection. Recent articles (2018–2021) foreground theoretical debates on polytheism and divine sovereignty, signaling an interest in re-framing Greek religious concepts for contemporary anthropology.

Editorial & Collaborative Work

• Co-editor of the international series Suppléments Kernos
• Co-director of several collective volumes on Homeric gods, Greco-Roman pantheons in dialogue, and gender and the divine
• Active contributor to Oxford Classical Dictionary and Brill’s Companions

Laboratories & Research Environment

Her research is embedded in the ANHIMA research federation (Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques), where she collaborates with historians, archaeologists, and philologists working on ancient Mediterranean religions. Within EPHE she co-directs seminars and doctoral training in the Section des sciences religieuses.