Costantino Marmo graduated in Philosophy at the University of Bologna (1982). From 1984 to 1988 he carried out research on the history of Italian earthquakes of medieval and modern age on behalf of the company SGA (Storia Geofisica Ambiente — History Geophysics Environment) based in Bologna. From 1988 to 1992 he was PhD student in Semiotics at the University of Bologna, under the supervision of Prof. Umberto Eco. In 1992 he obtained the his PhD in Semiotics.
From 1992 to 1998 he collaborated to Encyclomedia. Multimedia Guide to the History of European Civilization: The Seventeenth Century (direction: U. Eco, publisher: Opera Multimedia, Olivetti Group) for the company Horizons Unlimited based in Bologna. In the same years he participated in numerous national and international conferences, presenting papers in English and Italian; he also organized national and international conferences on semiotics and history of semiotics; he delivered research seminars and taught as Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna. He also spent periods of research abroad (Copenhagen, Institute of Medieval Latin and Greek, January-December 1990, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, January-July 1993).
In 1998 he was enrolled as Associate Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, where he taught Semiotics and History of Semiotics in undergraduate and graduate programmes. Since 2005 he is Full Professor of Semiotics at the same University; from 2006 to 2012 he held the position of President of the Programme in Communication Sciences. From 2012 to 2018 he has been President of the School of Arts and Humanities (which substitutes for the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy after the Gelmini reform). From dec. 2019 he is Director of the ‘Umberto Eco’ International Center for Humanities of the University of Bologna.
He is a member of several learned societies that reflect the variety of his multidisciplinary interests: AISS (Italian Association of Semiotic Studies), SFL (Society of Philosophy of Language), SISPM (Italian Society for the Study of Medieval Thought); CISPELS (Intersociety Coordination for the History of Linguistic and Semiotic Thought). Since 1998, his research activity has resulted in the participation in international and national conferences, in the organization of some national and international conferences; in the participation in international projects, either as a member of the research team (“Brito Project”: for the edition of the philosophical works of Radulphus Brito, master of arts in Paris at the end of 13th century), or as a member of the Advisory Board (“Representation and Reality: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Aristotelian Tradition”, funded by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for the period 2013-2019 and hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science of the University of Gothenburg — Sweden; “Topica Project: Elements of Pragmatics in Aristotle’s Topics and its Medieval Tradition”, University of Gothenburg); finally, his research lead to the publication of several articles, essays and monographs; local responsible (University of Boogna Unit) in the PRIN 2017 Research Project “Books and Readers in Florence from the XIIIth to the XVth century: The Library of Santa Croce”.
His research mainly focuses on:
i) the study of authors and texts that contributed to the history of ancient and medieval semiotics, with particular attention to:
- unpublished medieval texts, of which he offered some partial editions and detailed analysis;
- published texts but not yet taken into due consideration by semiotic historiography;
ii) the examination of themes and problems of contemporary semiotic theories and their relations with some neighboring disciplines (linguistic semantics, pragmatics, analytical philosophy of language);
iii) the analysis of cases of communication in the public sphere (emergency communication) and in the private-commercial or business area.
He is an active member of scientific and editorial boards of journals such as «Vivarium. A Journal for Medieval and Early-Modern Philosophy and Intellectual Life» (Leiden, Brill (1963-), «CIMAGL. Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Âge Greek and Latin» (Copenhagen, Saxo Institut) (1969-); «VS Versus. Quaderni di Studi Semiotici» (Milan, Bompiani) (1971-2015) (Bologna, Il Mulino) (2015-), «Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica» (Milan, Vita e Pensiero) (1909-).
Since 2017 he coordinates the national project of Standard Test OnLine (TOLC) for the access to undergraduate programmes in the Humanities, in collaboration with several Italian Universities (Udine, Padua, Verona, Bologna, Rome La Sapienza, Naples Federico II, Naples “Orientale”, Arcavacata di Rende, Catania) under the supervision of CISIA (Interuniversity Consortium of Integrated Systems for Access).
