Degree (BA+MA) on the Faculty of History and Preservation of Cultural Heritage – University of Bologna.

PhD in “Bysantium and Eurasia” with a dissertation on Medieval History on the Cultural Heritage Department – University of Bologna.

Her researches and publications are nearly all related to the field of medical humanities. In particular she studies the diseases’ lexicon between the Middle Ages and the early modern age through medical and hagiographic sources and the history of birth and the figures that assisted the woman in labour. This latter research carries out through comparison of medical, hagiographic, juridical and literary texts.

Main publications:

Ignis sacer. Una storia culturale del ‘fuoco sacro’ dall’antichità al Settecento (Micrologus’ Library 51), (Florence, SISMEL, 2013)

Saint Anthony’s Fire from Antiquity to the 18th Century (Amsterdam University Press), forthcoming (2019)

‘Retracing Childbirth through Hagiographical Texts and Canonication Processes in Italy and France between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Century’, in Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World. European and Middle Eastern Cultures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by C. Dopfel, A. Foscati and C. Burnett (Cursor Mundi, 36) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019)

‘Venire alla luce e rinascere. Il cesareo da madre morta e il miracolo à répit nel tardo Medioevo’, in Nascere. Il parto dall’epoca tardoantica all’Età moderna, ed. by A. Foscati, C. Dopfel and A. Parmeggiani (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2017)

‘Nonnatus dictus quod caeso defunctae matris utero prodiit’. Postmortem Caesarian Section in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, Social History of Medicine, April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hky022

‘I miracoli del parto: personaggi e rituali nelle fonti agiografiche tra XIII e XVI secolo’, Reti Medievali Rivista, 19, 2 (2018), pp. 63-83 http://www.rmojs.unina.it/index.php/rm/article/view/5864

‘La scena del parto. Nascita del corpo e salvezza dell’anima tra religione, medicina e “magia” nell’altomedioevo’, in La presenza degli infanti nelle Religioni del Mediterraneo Antico: la vita e la morte, i rituali e i culti tra Archeologia, Antropologia e Storia delle Religioni, ed. by C. Terranova (Rome: Aracne editrice, 2014), pp. 311-337