Leonardo Quaquarelli graduated in Classical Literature at the University of Bologna in 1986. He obtained the Diploma of Paleography, Archivistics and Diplomatics at the School of the State Archives of Modena (1987).
Since 1987, he has carried out research at the Bolognese Renaissance Humanistic Archive (ARUB) focusing on historical writings, working on the census of Bolognese chronicles (Memoria urbis. Census of Bolognese chronicles of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Bologna, Emilia-Romagna Region, 1993) and the critical and commented edition of the family book by humanist Cesare Nappi (CESARE NAPPI, Memoriale mei. Ricordi de mi, con l'appendice del Memoriale secondo, Bologna, EdG, 1997).
In 1998 he obtained his PhD in Italian Studies (Humanities) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.
In 1999 he was awarded a two-year post-doctoral scholarship at the Department of Italian Studies of the University of Bologna.
Since 1 October 2002 he has been a researcher in Philology of Italian Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Bologna. In November 2005 he was confirmed in his role.
Since 15 October 2014 he has been Associate Professor of Philology of Italian Literature at the same Faculty.
He delivers courses for the three-year and master's degree courses and, more specifically, he teaches Italian Literature and Philology of Italian Literature. He is director of the journal «Schede Umanistiche».
His research interest focus on the Bolognese manuscript and printed book production between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with the design and implementation of computer procedures for the analysis of characters (Verifiche su Baldassarre Azzoguidi: un tratto di storia incunabolistica rivisitato da bibliologia, filologia e informatica', in 'Sul libro bolognese del Rinascimento, edited by L. Balsamo and L. Quaquarelli, Bologna, CLUEB, 1994), the census of Bolognese fifteenth-century copyists, the Bolognese Renaissance binding.
A critical panorama of the literature in Bologna in the age of Humanism can be read in Per singulare memoria. Retoriche a margine e identità municipale nel Quattrocento bolognese (Bologna, Clueb, 2001).
He has studied humanistic epigraphy between Ciriaco d'Ancona and Felice Feliciano (Felice Feliciano e Francesco Scalamonti (junior?), in Ciriaco d'Ancona e la cultura antiquaria dell'Umanesimo, Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 1998; Felice Feliciano letterato nel suo epistolario, in L'“antiquario” Felice Feliciano veronese tra epigrafia antica, letteratura e arti del libro, Padova, Antenore, 1995; Ciriaco d'Ancona e il viaggio umanistico, in Custodi della tradizione e avanguardie del nuovo sulle sponde dell'Adriatico, Bologna, Clueb, 2006)
In collaboration with Zita Zanardi, he has edited the volume Pichiana. Bibliografia delle edizioni e degli studi (Firenze, Olschki, 2005).
He has traced an analysis of fifteenth-century motifs of Bolognese nineteenth-century painting in Lettura ottocentesca del Quattrocento bolognese: ricerca erudita ed evocazione pittorica, in Municipio, Nazione ed Europa fra l'età di Mazzini e l'età di Carducci. Scrittura ed immagine nella ricognizione della memoria storica come identità (Bologna, I libri di Emil, 2008).
In 2008, the Proceedings of the international conference esti agronomici d'area emiliana e Rinascimento europeo. La cultura agraria fra letteratura e scienza da Pier de' Crescenzi a Filippo Re, (Bologna, 31 May-1 June 2007), edited with L. Avellini and R. Finzi were published. They contain L. Quaquarelli’s contribution «Che non è minga un dire de fola»: l'altra agronomia medievale bolognese.
In 2009 he published the essay Per un profilo aggiornato di Pietro da Moglio («SCHEDE UMANISTICHE», 2010, XXIII (2009), pp. 33 - 55), which constitutes an initial assessment of the investigations on the philological culture of our full fourteenth century. For the same author he built the entry of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome, Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia, 2011, 75, pp. 267-273).
In 2010, he participated in the Pio Rajna Center project Gli Autografi dei Letterati italiani. Il Cinquecento (eds. M. Motolese, P. Procaccioli and E. Russo: L. Quaquarelli signs the dossier on Carlo Sigonio's autographs); in the volume Il Quattrocento. I Quaquarelli edited the entry on Ciriaco d'Ancona.
In May 2010 he entered the PRIN research program (project of the Bologna unit coordinated by L. Avellini) presented by the units of Bologna, Siena and Urbino with the title Generi di scrittura nella Repubblica dei letterati italiana ed europea fra Rinascimento e Barocco: indagine a campione su biografie, carteggi, accademie.
Since 2011 he has been one of the editors of the online journal TransPostCross. Letterature culture (http://www.transpostcross.it).
He investigated the history of philological studies in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century, the first results of which he exhibited in the report explicit Filologia esplicita: dagli Studi di Filologia Italiana a Italia Medioevale e Umanistica at the conference Le discipline letterarie e linguistiche in Italia fra università e nazione 1861-2011 (Bologna, 1-2 dicembre 2011), appeared in "Literary experiences", 37/4, 2012, pp. 155-166.
He has published the monograph Il Quattrocento dei copisti. Bologna, Bologna, I libri di Emil, 2012, which includes the results of a twenty-year survey on the complex and articulated book production of Bologna between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the first decade of the sixteenth century.
In 2013 the profiles of humanist Cesare Nappi and of the main architect of the architectural renewal of Bologna of the Bentivolesque age Gaspare Nadi appeared, both published on the website of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (www.treccani.it).
In 2014 the first volume of the fifteenth century of Quattrocento degli Autografi dei Letterati italiani was released, in which he edited the entry Ciriaco d'Ancona (pp. 112-121), the "entry" Pandolfi, Girolamo in volume LXXX of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Then the second augmented and revised edition of the volume Il Quattrocento dei copisti. Bologna was published, with 72 plates (Bologna, I libri di Emil).
