Silvia Ferrara

Silvia Ferrara,Professor of Mycenaean Philology, was previously Associate Professor at Sapienza, University of Rome. She returned to Italy in 2011, with the "reverse brain drain" programme entitled to Rita Levi Montalcini. She studied Archaeology and Classics at University College London and Oxford. After her PhD (2006), she became Junior Research Fellow in Archaeology at St John’s College, Oxford (2006-2010). She taught at University College London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Rome.

She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant INSCRIBE (Invention of Scripts and their Beginnings).

She is interested in the phenomenon of writing and its interface between art, language, material culture, visual perception and cognitive mechanisms. Her forthcoming book, Origins of Writing in the Eastern Mediterranean, is to be published by Oxford University Press. She has written several books, two with Oxford University Press (2012, 2013 and two with Feltrinelli, La Grande Invenzione, 2019, translated into 8 languages - the English translation is out in March 2022 and Il Salto. Segni, figure, parole: viaggio all'origine dell'immaginazione, 2021.