Gavino Scala

Gavino Scala serves as a Post-Doctoral Assistant at the Institute of Italian Studies within the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society at the University of Italian Switzerland (USI), collaborating since March 2025 on the project "Fable, Emblem, Poem, Performance: Renaissance Word and Image Tales" under Professor G. Cirnigliaro.

Her academic credentials include:

• PhD in Romance Philology from the University of Siena (2021), jointly supervised by the University of Zurich
• Certificat de spécialisation en humanités numériques (Digital Humanities Specialization Certificate) from the University of Geneva (2024)

Dr. Scala's research integrates digital methodologies with medieval textual scholarship, specializing in critical editions of specula principis (mirrors for princes) and specula dominarum (mirrors for noblewomen). She examines political treatises like Egidio Romano's De regimine principum and its translations, French court propaganda (13th-14th centuries), ambassadorial literature (13th-16th centuries), and law-literature intersections in medieval contexts. Her digital humanities expertise focuses on OCR-HTR systems for medieval manuscript processing and digital edition workflows.

Her seminal 2024 monograph on Henri de Gauchy's Livre du gouvernement des roys et des princes exemplifies her hybrid philological-digital approach to manuscript tradition analysis. This work anchors her publication record in medieval French political literature studies, emphasizing textual transmission, editorial methodology, and historical-linguistic evolution within didactic genres.

No scientific awards or honors are documented in the available records.

Dr. Scala participates in externally funded research projects without supervision responsibilities: previously in the "Les « traités d'ambassadeurs »" initiative (Universities of Fribourg/Geneva) under Professor N.-L. Perret, and currently in USI's Renaissance interdisciplinary project. Her grant involvement centers on collaborative team-based research rather than principal investigator roles.

She operates within the Institute of Italian Studies' research ecosystem at USI, building on prior collaborations with medieval studies teams at Fribourg and Geneva. Current work emphasizes digital textual scholarship within Renaissance cultural production frameworks, though dedicated laboratory infrastructure isn't specified.