Gaia Tomazzoli

Dr. Gaia Tomazzoli is a tenure-track researcher in the Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies at Sapienza University of Rome, specializing in Dante studies, medieval Italian literature, and Digital Humanities. Her research bridges traditional philological approaches with cutting-edge digital methodologies, particularly in the application of semantic web technologies to literary analysis of Dante's works and medieval Italian texts.

Her academic journey includes:

• Bachelor's degree in Letters from Sapienza University of Rome (2011)
• Master's degree in Text Sciences from Sapienza University of Rome (2014)
• Study period at King's College, University of Cambridge (2012-2013) through Erasmus program
• PhD from Ca' Foscari University of Venice (2018), supervised by Saverio Bellomo and Eugenio Burgio

Dr. Tomazzoli's research focuses on the intersection of traditional literary scholarship and digital methodologies. Her work examines metaphors and figurative language in Dante and medieval Italian lyric poetry, the rhetoric of medieval prophetic texts, and the application of digital humanities to textual scholarship. She has made significant contributions to the development of formal ontologies for literary analysis and has been instrumental in several major digital Dante projects.

Her recent publications demonstrate a growing trend toward interdisciplinary research that combines traditional philological analysis with computational methods. She has been particularly active in developing semantic web applications for Dante studies, creating ontologies that formalize literary concepts and scholarly interpretations. Her work increasingly bridges literary studies with computer science, creating new methodologies for textual analysis that preserve philological rigor while enabling computational processing.

Her scientific achievements include:

• Paola Rigo Award from Ateneo Veneto for best doctoral thesis in Dante studies

Dr. Tomazzoli serves as secretary of the editorial board for "L'Alighieri" journal and is a member of the editorial board for "TranScript. Translation and writing in the European Middle Ages." She is affiliated with CERLIM (Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur la Littérature Italienne Médiévale) and VeDPH (Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities). Since 2021, she has been a member of the Doctoral College in Text Sciences from the Middle Ages to Modernity at Sapienza University.

She coordinates multiple research projects, most notably serving as vice-PI and unit coordinator for the PRIN PNRR project "MITE - Make It Explicit. Documenting interpretations of literary fictions with conceptual formal models" since 2023. She has also contributed to numerous international collaborations including "Hypermedia Dante Network," "BIFLOW," and "Eurotales," demonstrating her leadership in creating sustainable digital infrastructure for humanities scholarship.