Research Team

Arianna Magnani obtained her PhD from the University of Venice “Ca’Foscari” in 2019; she is currently a researcher in Chinese studies at the University of Enna “Kore,” where she leads the 2022 PRIN Project “M.A.R.E.”, a database on Manuscripts and books from Asia Reaching Europe jointly developed by Enna, Pisa, and Salerno Universities. Her research interest focuses on early Europe-China transcultural exchanges, and on the transmission of Chinese texts through the mediation of missionaries during Ming and Qing dynasties.

Contact: arianna.magnani@unikore.it

Alessandro Tosco earned his PhD in Euro-Asian Studies at the University of Turin, Italy. He enhanced his proficiency in the Chinese language by attending courses at the Beijing Language and Culture University and East China Normal University in Shanghai. In 2014 he was awarded a scholarship for the “Young Sinologists” programme by Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters. He currently works as an associate professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Enna Kore and as the Italian Director of the Confucius Institute at Enna. His research primarily focuses on imperial Chinese literature with a specific interest in the theatre of the Yuan dynasty. Within Cultural Studies, he examines the reception of ancient Chinese thought during the European Enlightenment, particularly through the lens of Jesuit missionary Latin translations of Confucian classics. In the PRIN M.A.R.E. project, he investigates the dissemination of writings by Jesuit missionaries published in the encyclopaedic work Description de la Chine, edited by Du Halde in 1735, with a focus on sections devoted to Chinese literature.

Contact: alessandro.tosco@unikore

Salvatore Sorce studied Computer Science and Engineering (“Ingegneria Informatica”) at the University of Palermo, and received his M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2006) degrees.
Currently he is permanent and full-time Associate Professor in Information Processing Systems in the Department of Engineering and Architecture, and vice-rector for ICT and Technological Transfer, at the Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore” (Italy). He teaches “Object-Oriented Programming” and “Digital Representation and Processing” at the BSc, and Human-Centred AI and “Vulnerability of Systems and Networks” at the MSc.

His contribution in the M.A.R.E. project is in data representation, information visualisation and usability.

Contact: salvatore.sorce@unikore.it

Srushti Goud is a cultural heritage researcher, architect and art-lover from India. She completed her Bachelor of Architecture from M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, Karnataka, India in 2013. In 2015, she completed International Master’s in Interior Architecture and Design (History, Theory and Criticism) from CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India. She recently completed her PhD from the University of Turin, Italy, on the topic ‘Value Communication for Cultural Heritage: Operational Workflow for Digital Environments’. She wishes to bridge the gap between the research and practice of heritage communication and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kore University of Enna on the project “M.A.R.E.: Manuscripts and books from Asia Reaching Europe. A semantically enhanced digital library mapping Asian books circulation along the Silk Maritime Routers”.

Contact: srushti.goud@unikore.it

Luisa Andriollo is a research fellow in Byzantine studies at the University of Pisa. She has held fellowships at the Universities of Princeton and Bamberg, and from the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Her research focuses on the administrative and social history of Byzantium, particularly on aristocratic society and culture of the 8^th-12^th centuries; more recently, she has extended her investigations to interreligious debates and cross-cultural exchanges. Her publications include the monograph Constantinople et les provinces d’Asie Mineure, IXe-XIe siècles (2017) and Byzantium and Its Neighbours: religious Self and Otherness in Dialogue (2024), co-edited with Luigi D’Amelia. As part of the M.A.R.E. project, she studies the production of Byzantine anti-Islamic polemical works in the 12th-13th centuries and their circulation between the Levant and Europe. She is also looking at other textual genres (letters, diplomatic documents) as evidence of the existence of extensive social and cultural networks between the Byzantine East and Italy.

Contact: luisa.andriollo@unipi.it

Sabrina Senatore is a Full Professor of Computer Science at the University of Salerno, Italy. She co-chairs the IEEE CIS Task Force on Intelligent Agents (IEEE-TFIA).

Prof. Senatore holds editorial positions in prominent international journals, including Senior Editor for Expert Systems with Applications (Elsevier) and Executive Editor-in-Chief for Information Sciences (Elsevier). She has published extensively in leading international conferences and journals and has served as an organizer and program committee member for numerous conferences.

Her research focuses on the development and application of intelligent systems that integrate methods from Computational Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval, Knowledge Graphs, the Semantic Web, and Intelligent Agents. She is also involved in several national research projects. In the PRIN MARE project, she is responsible for the ontological modeling of the ancient manuscript collection, contributing to the development of a semantic search engine integrated with a web-based interface for search functionality.

Contact: ssenatore@unisa.it