Marianna Zarantonello

Marianna Zarantonello is a Researcher at the Asien-Orient Institut within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Tübingen, where she has held positions since October 2023 as a Teach@Tübingen Fellow and DAAD PRIME Fellow, transitioning to a research associate role in October 2024. Her academic trajectory includes prior research fellowship at the University of Padua's Institute of Medieval Philosophy until May 2023.

She earned her doctorate in 2022 through a cotutelle arrangement between the University of Padua (Philology, Linguistics, and Literature) and the University of Zurich (Islamic Studies), building on foundational studies in Classics, Ancient History, and Arabic Studies at Padua. Her educational path reflects deep interdisciplinary engagement with Mediterranean and Near Eastern intellectual traditions.

Zarantonello's research centers on cross-cultural knowledge transfer between Greek and Arabic intellectual spheres during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. She specializes in wisdom literature, philosophical poetics, and political advice literature (mirrors for princes), with particular focus on how Greek poetic authority—especially Homer—was adapted within Arabic falsafa traditions. Her work examines textual transmission mechanics and the transformation of philosophical concepts through translation movements.

Analysis of her 15 most recent publications reveals consistent thematic threads: al-Farabi's poetics constitutes a major research pillar, while Greek-Arabic reception studies—particularly Homer's metamorphosis in Arabic sources—forms another core strand. Her scholarship demonstrates rigorous philological methodology applied to translation theory, political thought, and literary analysis within medieval Islamic contexts, often bridging Greco-Arabic philosophical discourse with literary studies.

Her scholarly contributions have been supported by competitive fellowships:

• Teach@Tübingen Fellowship for pedagogical development
• DAAD PRIME Fellowship enabling international collaboration with the University of Exeter

As an active educator, she teaches Arabic language courses and seminars on pre-modern Islamic political thought at Tübingen, serving as faculty course advisor for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies with responsibilities for academic accreditation. Her conference presentations at institutions like Freiburg University and the American Oriental Society demonstrate ongoing engagement with global scholarly communities in advancing Greco-Arabic intellectual history.