Giovanni Geraci

Main research fields: history of the political, administrative, social, economic and religious systems, institutions and structures of the Roman and Late Antique worlds, with particular focus on Hellenistic, Roman and Late Antique East. Critical editions of both Greek and Latin inscriptions and of Greek papyri of the Hellenistic, Roman and Late Antique age. He is Director and General Editor of scientific periodicals and series on relevant aspects of the study of administrative patterns and structures of the ancient world.


The Oriental "roots" of Europe.
"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness" (A. De Tocqueville). But wich past? Since long time one of the most powerful commonplaces is that Europe is founded on Western "roots"; this has been developed through a huge amount of studies mainly developed by scholars on Middle Ages particularly skilled in Western Middle Ages, like those of the circle of "Les Annales", as shown by the broad success of  Le Goff's works.
No particular attention has been given yet to the analysis (on the "long durèe") on the Oriental "roots" of Europe, which are particularly evident in the making itself of the political and institutional lexicon still in use, already known and meaningful in the ancient Eastern Greek world, ripened in the Hellenistic East through contacts between peoples, civilisations and cultures carried out by Alexander the Great and his successors, and passed to us through the cultural interactions between East and West achieved in the Roman Empire and their synthesis carried out in Late Antique East. The multinational and multicultural achievements of this politically connected world (a model of strong cultural integration through preservation of differences in identities) going from India to Spain, through Anatolia, Syria, Grece, Egypt, Africa and the Mediterranean, was transfused into Modern Europe through Byzantium, the Arabs, Venice, Southern Russia, Poland, via Flanders, England and so on.
A new focus on the Oriental "roots" and the Eastern historical chromosomes of Europe is thus of immense value for the building up and deep undestanding of a new European and Mediterranean Historical and Cultural Consciousness.

Major fields of interest:
- sovereignty, government, centre and peripheries, political forms and state administration;
- historical-political-economical interactions; societies, economies, institutions in multiethnical and multicultural contexts; institutional economics; social identities and self-representations; institutions, institutional change and economic performances and evolutions; commercial interactions, networks and stuctures; social stratifications, social role of labour, work organisation and professionalisms;
- constitution, development and integrated administration of a model of Mediterranean Common Market with political barycentre in Europe;
- historical-religious interactions;
- scientific-cultural interactions; sciences and pseudosciences; the antique Eastern role in founding scientific approaches.