Tommaso Braccini (Pistoia, 1977) graduated cum laude in Greek Literature at the University of Florence (2002), obtained his PhD in Anthropology of the Ancient World at the University of Siena (2006), and was Ricercatore (Assistant Professor) of Classical Philology (2011-2016) and Associate Professor of Modern Greek Language and Literature (2016-2019) at the University of Turin. Since 2019 he is Associate Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Siena.
Since 2016 he is Τακτικὸ μέλος (Εταίρο) of the Ελληνική Λαογραφική Εταιρεία; in autumn 2019 he was Paul and Sandra Watkins Fellow at the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies of The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH).
He was the PI of the international project “Afrodite dea mediterranea”, carried out in partnership with the Université Nice Sophia – Antipolis, funded under the call PRES Euro-mediterraneo 2013, an initiative by Pole de Recherche et d’Enseignement Superieur Euro-Méditerranéen.
He's currently participating in the project “Le devenir numérique d’un texte fondateur: l’Iliade et le Genavensis Graecus 44” (PI prof. David Bouvier, Université de Lausanne), funded by FNS – Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique (project n. 172733).
He’s interested in the study of folkloric creatures and traditional narratives from antiquity to the present, with particular focus on the Greek Middle Ages and on figures of fear. Among his books are Prima di Dracula: archeologia del vampiro, Bologna 2011 (whose translation into Czech, Před Draculou: archeologie upíra, Praha 2014, was published with the contribution of the National Commission for the Promotion of Italian Culture Abroad), Indagine sull’orco: miti e storie del divoratore di bambini (Bologna 2013); Lupus in Fabula: fiabe, leggende e barzellette in Grecia e a Roma (Rome 2018); Miti vaganti: leggende metropolitane tra gli antichi e noi, Bologna 2021; Folklore, Roma 2021. He is the author of translations and commentaries of the Philogelos (Genoa 2008), of the Book of Wonders by Phlegon of Tralles (with M. Scorsone, Turin 2013), of the eighth book of Plutarch's Convivial Questions (with E. Pellizer, Naples 2014), of the Metamorphoses by Antoninus Liberalis (with S. Macrì, Milan 2018), and of the Byzantine poem Ptocholeon (Turin 2020). He is also interested in the "myth" of Constantinople through the centuries, and he published Il romanzo di Costantinopoli: guida letteraria alla Roma d’Oriente (with S. Ronchey, Turin 2010) and Bisanzio prima di Bisanzio: miti e fondazioni della Nuova Roma (Rome 2019). He also wrote the handbook La scienza dei testi antichi: introduzione alla filologia classica (Florence 2017).
So far, he has been the supervisor of more than 30 BA/MA theses, and the tutor of two PhD candidates who successfully defended their thesis and obtained the title (one of them is now a fellow in an international research centre); he's currently the tutor of other two PhD candidates.
ERC evaluation panels of interest: SH3_4 Attitudes and beliefs; SH3_10 Religious studies, ritual; symbolic representation; SH5_1 Classics, ancient literature and art; SH5_2 Theory and history of literature, comparative literature; SH5_3 Philology and palaeography; SH5_8 Cultural studies, cultural identities and memories, cultural heritage; SH6_12 Gender history; cultural history; history of collective identities and memories; SH6_13 History of ideas, intellectual history, history of economic thought.