ITSERR

8a Conferenza Nazionale di Public History dell’AIPH
2026-06-08 08:00 - 2026-06-12 17:00 (Europe/Brussels) | Università degli Studi di Udine, Via Margreth, 3, Udine
ITSERR researcher Ilaria Sabbatini (University of Palermo) took part in the 8th National Conference of Public History of the AIPH, “Shaking History. Public History and Reconstruction – Heritage on the Move: Digital, Memory and Participation”, where she coordinated the panel “Serving Research, Supporting Participation”. During the session, Francesca Cadeddu (Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII – FSciRe) delivered a paper entitled “Serving Research, Supporting Participation”, and Marco Papasidero (University of Palermo) presented “Sanctuaria: a digital and collaborative archive for the collection of ex‑votos and foundation legends”. Ilaria Sabbatini also contributed with the paper “Building a Research Archive: Digitization as a Historiographical Practice”.
View the programme.

Event “Religion at the Greenhouse. Exploring the Dynamics and Growth of RESILIENCE”
2026-05-11 09:30 - 19:00 | Serre dei Giardini Margherita, Via Castiglione, 134, Bologna, Italy
On Monday, 11 May 2026, Bologna will host “Religion at the Greenhouse. Exploring the Dynamics and Growth of RESILIENCE”, the event marking the conclusion of the preparatory phase of RESILIENCE, the European research infrastructure dedicated to the study of religions.
The event will bring together representatives from European and national institutions, universities, research infrastructures and technology partners to discuss the achievements of RESILIENCE and its future development.
The programme includes a keynote lecture by Prof. Alberto Melloni (FSCIRE / University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), a round table on research infrastructures, public policies and the study of religions, as well as four thematic afternoon panels focusing on services, impact, digital innovation and public information on religions.
Among the representatives of the ITSERR project, Fabrizio D’Avenia (University of Palermo) and Rudy Demo will share the experience developed within ITSERR by contributing to two of the afternoon panels. Rudy Demo will take part in the panel “Serving Research, Building Knowledge”, dedicated to RESILIENCE services and their future development for both the research community and the private sector. Fabrizio D’Avenia will participate in the panel “Impacting Research”, focused on the areas of impact generated by RESILIENCE and on the challenges of impact‑driven research in the field of religious studies.
View the full programme.

Workshop "Le infrastrutture di ricerca per l'innovazione"
2026-04-22 09:30 - 13:30 | Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Piazzale Aldo Moro, 7, Roma
ITSERR took part as one of the key actors in the national workshop “Research Infrastructures for Innovation”, promoted by the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) and dedicated to the role of Research Infrastructures in innovation processes and in collaboration with businesses.
The initiative, organised by CNR in collaboration with the network of Infrastructure Managers of the six ESFRI thematic domains (Digital, Environment, Energy, Health & Food, Physical Sciences and Engineering, Social and Cultural Innovation), served as a strategic platform for dialogue between the research system and the business community, with the aim of fostering structured pathways of collaboration and co‑innovation.
The discussions highlighted the role of the 33 Italian Research Infrastructures, funded under the NextGenerationEU/PNRR framework, in supporting innovation pathways and cooperation with industry.
The presence of representatives from Research Infrastructures and multi-sector industrial stakeholders made the workshop a concrete opportunity for high‑level networking, direct exchange and the sharing of use cases and successful collaboration models, strengthening the positioning of Research Infrastructures as strategic drivers of innovation and competitiveness.

Exploring the Frontier of Science with AI and the Role of Humanities
2026-03-09 - 2026-03-11 | Hotel Posta, Piazza del Monte 2, Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy
From 9 to 11 March 2026, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia will host the international seminar “Exploring the Frontier of Science with AI and the Role of Humanities”, a high-level event dedicated to the relationship between Artificial Intelligence, scientific research and the humanities. The event will take place at the Hotel Posta and is organised by UNIMORE and the European research infrastructure RESILIENCE, with the support of the ITSERR project – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE, funded under the PNRR – NextGenerationEU.
The seminar will bring together scholars from European and international universities and research institutions, alongside representatives from public institutions and research bodies, to discuss how Artificial Intelligence is transforming the ways in which knowledge is produced and the role of the humanities in scientific innovation processes.
The initiative forms part of the activities of the European RESILIENCE research project, an interdisciplinary infrastructure dedicated to the study of religions, which connects research centres, archives and digital services across Europe.
The seminar will be spread over three days, featuring discussion sessions and exchanges between experts from various disciplinary fields – ranging from the digital humanities to philosophy, from history to linguistics, and from law to computer science.
You can file here the programme: Superseminar_programme_9-11March_WEB2

Seminar “Interpretare l’Intelligenza: Ermeneutica medievale e Intelligenze Artificiali”
2026-02-25 09:30 - 13:00 | Università degli Studi di Palermo, Campus Unipa - Via delle Scienze, ed. 15, Palermo
At the Department of Culture and Society of the University of Palermo, the seminar “Interpretare l’Intelligenza: ermeneutica medievale e intelligenze artificiali” was held, organised within the framework of the ITSERR project – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE for Religious Studies. The morning opened with welcome addresses by Valentina Favarò, Director of the Department of Culture and Society, Fabrizio D’Avenia, Principal Investigator of the ITSERR project, and Luciana Pepi (University of Palermo).
The seminar featured contributions by Federico Dal Bo (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) and Michal Valčo (Comenius University Bratislava), both ITSERR TNA Fellows, who respectively explored key approaches to reading religious texts in medieval Judaism and Christianity and examined contemporary techno‑gnostic narratives. The round table “AI for the religious texts within the framework of the Religious Studies”, with the participation of Federico Dal Bo, Andrea Ravasco (University of Palermo) and Michal Valčo, further discussed how artificial intelligence tools can be integrated into the study of religious texts.
The initiative offered an interdisciplinary forum on the relationship between hermeneutics, religious texts and artificial intelligence, in line with ITSERR’s aim to strengthen research in the field of Religious Studies through digital technologies.

Dal papiro all’algoritmo. Lingue antiche e Intelligenza Artificiale: il futuro nasce dal passato
2026-02-19 08:00 - 2026-02-26 17:00 | Università degli Studi di Palermo, Campus Unipa - Via delle Scienze, ed. 15, Palermo
At the Campus of the University of Palermo, the initiative “Dal papiro all’algoritmo. Lingue antiche e Intelligenza Artificiale: il futuro nasce dal passato”, took place over two days, involving high school students from Palermo in a series of hands-on workshops exploring the intersection between the humanities and digital technologies.
Over the course of the two days, hosted by the Department of Culture and Society and the Department of Humanities, ITSERR researchers led participants through workshops that, by using software developed within the project, enabled them to explore manuscripts, archives, sacred texts and applications of Artificial Intelligence, ranging from the Corpus Iuris Canonici in electronic form to challenges related to deep fakes, from papal registers preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Archive to “verse hunts” across ancient languages and digital platforms.
The initiative brought together students from the National Boarding School “Giovanni Falcone”, the “Benedetto Croce” Science High School, the “Umberto I” Classical High School and the “Giuseppe Garibaldi” Classical High School, accompanied by a group of ITSERR researchers including Vincenzo Roberto Imperia, Ivana Panzeca, Domenico Ciccarello, Marco Papasidero, Marco Zanella, Ilaria Sabbatini, Andrea Ravasco, Igor Spanò, Sara Abram, Fabio Tutrone and Marcello Costa.
The initiative clearly showed how artificial intelligence can support the humanities in the study of texts and traditions, not by replacing but by enhancing critical and interpretative perspectives. The dialogue with schools confirmed the central role of collaboration between universities, research and younger generations in building an informed and responsible digital culture.

Convegno "L'Utopia come categoria e come metodo"
2025-12-17 08:00 - 2025-12-18 17:00 | Università degli Studi di Palermo, Campus Unipa - Via delle Scienze, ed. 15, Palermo
ITSERR researchers from the University of Palermo, Ilaria Sabbatini, Domenico Ciccarello, Ivana Panzeca, Igor Spanò, Marco Papasidero, Andrea Ravasco, Sara Abram and Fabio Tutrone took part in the conference “L’utopia come categoria e come metodo: fonti, genealogie, prospettive”, organised by the Department of Culture and Society at the University of Palermo. Over two days, the event brought together scholars from different fields to discuss utopia as an analytical and methodological tool for reading contemporary complexity, from urban projects and future scenarios to the intersections between the humanities and artificial intelligence.
See the full programme.

Seminar "Manoscritti, scritture e conoscenze: la trasmissione del sapere nell'Islam medievale"
2025-12-11 14:00 - 17:00 | Biblioteca Giorgio La Pira – Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose – FSCIRE, via degli Schioppettieri, 25, Palermo, Italy
ITSERR researchers Sara Abram (University of Palermo) and Ivana Panzeca (University of Palermo) took part in the training day for students and PhD candidates “Manoscritti, scritture e conoscenze: la trasmissione del sapere nell’Islam medievale”, devoted to the foundations of manuscript culture in the Islamic world.
In her talk entitled “Il codice in caratteri arabi: l’eredità manoscritta nella tradizione islamica”, Ivana Panzeca outlined the main material and structural features of the codex in Arabic script, highlighting the role of manuscripts in the transmission of religious and scientific knowledge.
With the lecture “Le sei scritture: introduzione alla paleografia araba”, Sara Abram offered an introductory overview of the main types of Arabic script used in medieval manuscripts, showing how the different graphic forms reflect distinct contexts, functions and copying practices.

49th Austrian Linguistics Conference (ÖLT 2025)
2025-12-05 08:00 - 2025-12-08 17:00 | University of Klagenfurt
ITSERR researchers Giovanni Puccetti (IIT‑CNR), Marianna Napolitano (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia/FSCIRE) and Andrea Esuli (ISTI–CNR), together with Maria Cassese (ISTI‑CNR), took part in the 49th Austrian Linguistics Conference (Österreichische Linguistiktagung) in Klagenfurt, contributing to the 2nd Digital Slavic Panel devoted to digital methods in Slavic linguistics. The paper “Tracing historical and regional variation of Church Slavonic: a hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach” presented the use of the DIACU (DIAchronic Analysis of Church Slavonic) dataset to automatically classify liturgical texts into the different historical and regional varieties of Church Slavonic, combining machine-learning models with a qualitative analysis of the texts.

Seminar "Documentazione pontificia e strumenti digitali: i primi risultati del progetto ITSERR attraverso il caso del divieto di usura”
2025-11-17 11:00 - 12:30 | Fondazione Bruno Kessler – Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali, Via Santa Croce, 77, Trento, Trento, Italy
ITSERR researcher Laura Righi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) took part in the seminar “Documentazione pontificia e strumenti digitali: i primi risultati del progetto ITSERR attraverso il caso del divieto di usura”, within the “Tavola ovale di storia moderna” series organised by FBK‑ISIG. Her presentation illustrated research carried out in the framework of the ITSERR project, which uses digital tools to analyse the thirteenth‑century papal correspondence on the prohibition of usury, systematically examining letters from Alexander III to Honorius IV to map cases of usury, types of intervention by the Roman curia and the networks connecting papacy, local authorities and communities.
See the full programme.

IQSA 2025 Annual Meeting
2025-11-13 - 2025-11-16 | Loyola Marymount University, 1 Loyola Marymount University Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90045, United States
Amina El Ganadi (FSCIRE, Bologna / University of Palermo / University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), member of the research team of the ITSERR – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE project, presented the paper “Hallucinating tafsīr? Evaluating LLM QA on al-Ṭabarī’s Texts” at the IQSA 2025 Annual Meeting (International Qur’anic Studies Association).
Her contribution explores the potential and limitations of large language models in engaging with classical Islamic exegesis, evaluating their performance on al-Ṭabarī’s tafsīr on Sūrat Yūsuf and highlighting, in particular, cases of accurate answers versus hallucinations, that is, content not supported by the source text. For more information about the conference, please refer to the IQSA website and the page dedicated to the 2025 Annual Meeting.
For further details, see here.

2025-11-04 08:00 - 2025-11-09 17:00 | Suzhou International Expo Centre, Suzhou, China
ITSERR researcher Amina El Ganadi (University of Palermo, FSCIRE) took part in the Arabic NLP workshop co-located with the Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2025) conference in Suzhou, China.

Conferenza: "AI and Digital Humanities. Methodological Approaches, Theories and Methods"
2025-11-04 08:00 - 2025-11-05 17:00 | Università di Siena, via Banchi di Sotto, 55, Siena, Italy
Laura Righi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) and Riccardo Amerigo Vigliermo (Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose – FSCIRE), researchers in the ITSERR project, took part in the international conference “AI and Digital Humanities: Methodological Approaches, Theories and Methods”, held at the University of Siena. Within the panel “AI for Document Enhancement and Use” (chair Enrica Salvatori), they presented the paper “Cataloguing, Indexing and Summarise. AI between medieval Latin scrolls and digital books in Arabic script”, focused on the use of artificial intelligence to describe, index and enhance documentary materials ranging from medieval Latin scrolls to digital books in Arabic script.
See the full programme.

ICCV 2025_International Conference on Computer Vision
2025-10-22 | Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu, HI, United States
Giuseppe Cartella, Vittorio Cuculo and Marcella Cornia took part in the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) presenting the paper “Modeling Human Gaze Behavior with Diffusion Models for Unified Scanpath Prediction” (co‑authored by Giuseppe Cartella, Vittorio Cuculo, Alessandro D’Amelio, Marcella Cornia, Giuseppe Boccignone and Rita Cucchiara). The work introduces ScanDiff, a model that combines diffusion models and Vision Transformers to generate more diverse and realistic gaze trajectories, advancing the state of the art in human scanpath prediction.
For more information, see the programme.

44th Course of the International School of Ius Commune
2025-10-19 08:00 - 2025-10-23 17:00
The 44th Course of the International School of Ius Commune, held in Erice, Sicily, and dedicated to “Legal, cultural and religious pluralism: aspects and problems in the tradition of the ‘ius commune” hosted a contribution from ITSERR.
ITSERR researcher Roberto Imperia (University of Palermo), presented his latest study, “Il ‘Corpus Iuris Canonici’ nell’età digitale: anticipazioni sul software di ricerca GNORM.” Developed within the ITSERR project, GNORM is one of the digital tools designed to support historical and religious studies, offering new ways to explore and analyse the Corpus Iuris Canonici, a foundational legal corpus of the European Middle Ages.
The course was organised by the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture as part of the long-standing International School of Ius Commune.
🔗 The programme

Workshop: The Dānešnāme and its (structural) aftermath
2025-10-15 08:00 - 2025-10-17 17:00 | Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
ITSERR researcher Ivana Panzeca (University of Palermo), took part in the International Conference “The Dānešnāme and its (Structural) Aftermath” at KU Leuven, presenting the paper “Discovering and mapping the manuscripts of Dānešnāme-ye ʿAlāʾī”. Her contribution focused on the identification and mapping of the manuscript tradition of Avicenna’s Persian Dānešnāme-ye ʿAlāʾī, shedding light on the transmission and dissemination of this work across time and space.
View full programme.

International Conference "Pathways of Texts: From Ancient Traditions to New Computational Frontiers. Bibles, Libraries, Webs of Books"
2025-10-09 08:00 - 2025-10-10 17:00 | Monastero dei Benedettini San Nicolò l’Arena, Piazza Dante, 32, Catania, Italy
ITSERR project researchers participated in the international conference “Pathways of Texts: From Ancient Traditions to New Computational Frontiers. Bibles, Libraries, Webs of Books”. Anna Mambelli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia/FSCIRE) and Laura Bigoni (University of Bologna/FSCIRE) presented “The uBIQUity and Resilience of Scriptures and their Heritage”. Sara Abram (University of Palermo) presented “Ubiquitous Ḥadīths in Islamic Scriptures”.
Download the programme.

DIALOGHI CON LA STORIA DEL DIRITTO
2025-09-25 10:00 | Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza – Università degli Studi di Palermo, Piazza Bologni, 8, Palermo
On 25th September 2025, the Department of Law at the University of Palermo will host the event “DIALOGHI CON LA STORIA DEL DIRITTO”
The program will open with contributions from Prof. Beatrice Pasciuta and Prof. Fabrizio D’Avenia (University of Palermo), followed by a lecture by Dr. Ignazio Alessi (University of Cambridge) entitled “Medieval Papal Legates and Normative Authority: a Digital Approach to the Corpus Iuris Canonici.”
The event will conclude with a roundtable discussion featuring Dr. Alessi and Dr. Vincenzo Roberto Imperia and Dr. Arianna Pavone (University of Palermo), researchers within the ITSERR project.
The presence of Dr. Ignazio Alessi in Palermo is made possible by a Transnational Access (TNA) grant, within the framework of the ITSERR project. His research combines historical expertise with digital tools, offering innovative perspectives on the study of medieval canon law.

uBIQUity at the 11th CISSR Annual Meeting
2025-09-25 | University Residential Centre of Bertinoro, Via Frangipane, 6, Bertinoro, Forlì-Cesena
uBIQUity (ITSERR WP8) presented at the 11th CISSR – Annual Meeting on Christian Origins in Bertinoro, within the session Jewish History, Hellenistic Judaism, and Septuagint Studies, co-directed by Anna Mambelli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia / FSCIRE), scientific coordinator and product owner of the project.
The paper, entitled “Scriptural Continuities in the Alexandrian Tradition: A Computational Approach to the Septuagint in Philo and Clement”, was delivered by Laura Bigoni (University of Bologna) and Isabella Pignocco (University of Bari).
The presentation highlighted how uBIQUity provides innovative tools to investigate the Septuagint and its quotations in the Alexandrian tradition, with special reference to the textual heritage of Philo of Alexandria and Clement of Alexandria, and on the interplay between Judaism and early Christianity. This work also benefits from the classification of witnesses developed within the PRIN project “Resilient Septuagint”, directed by Davide Dainese (University of Bologna).

TPDL 2025_International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries
2025-09-23 - 2025-09-26 | Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
From 23 to 26 September 2025, Davide Caffagni (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), researcher in the ITSERR project, took part in the 29th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2025) in Tampere, Finland.
He presented the paper “Generating Synthetic Data with Large Language Models for Low-Resource Sentence Retrieval”, which investigates the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance sentence similarity search in low-resource domains such as ancient texts.
The study is part of WP8 of the ITSERR project and collects the most recent results from the research activities carried out within WP8.
Download the conference programme.

Seminar – From Classics to Circuits: Building and Explaining Multilingual Language Models
2025-09-19 10:00 - 12:00 | ISTI – Area della Ricerca CNR, Via G. Moruzzi 1, Pisa
On 19 September 2025, the Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa will host a seminar by Friederick Riemenschneider (University of Heidelberg), currently in Pisa as a visiting scholar under a Transnational Access (TNA) grant within the ITSERR – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE project.
The seminar will explore how multilingual language models generalize across languages. Starting from a purpose-built trilingual model zoo (Ancient Greek, Latin, English), the discussion will extend to large-scale models such as BLOOM, offering valuable insights for multilingual and historical language research. By bridging Classics and AI, the talk will highlight new perspectives at the intersection of the humanities and computational linguistics.
Referent: Giovanni Puccetti
Remote participation is available at the following link

8th ITSERR Training in-house “AI for Religious Studies: Unlocking Knowledge”
2025-09-11 08:00 - 2025-09-12 18:30 | Università degli Studi di Palermo, Campus Unipa - Via delle Scienze, ed. 15, Palermo
On 11–12 September 2025, the event will take place at the Complesso Monumentale dello Steri of the University of Palermo.
The ITSERR project, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) with resources from NextGenerationEU, enhances the European Research Infrastructure RESILIENCE by developing innovative digital tools and services for Religious Studies. During the event, it will showcase how research infrastructures can advance the study and understanding of religions in Europe through digital technologies and AI.
The conference, titled “ITSERR: A Project of Technological and Digital Innovation for Religious Studies,” opens on 11 September with institutional greetings and continues with sessions presenting ITSERR’s scientific results, including a keynote lecture by Alberto Melloni, with participation from international institutions and stakeholders, such as Barbara McGillivray from King’s College London, Eric Atwell from Leeds University, and Valentina Vavassori from the British Library.
Friday, 12 September, will be dedicated to workshops and hands-on training sessions led by national and international experts in the fields of Digital Humanities and Religious Studies.
All project partners – the National Research Council, University of Turin, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and University of Naples “L’Orientale” – will join, alongside directors of European research infrastructures in the humanities and RESILIENCE member research centres.
View the detailed: Programma TIH ITSERR. Un progetto d’innovazione tecnologica e digitale per le Scienze religiose
For further information: summerschoolitserr2025@itserr.it
Read here the English translation of the lecture: Prof. Melloni’s Lecture

Seminar "Forme ed espressioni dell'aristotelismo nella tradizione araba"
2025-09-11 08:00 - 2025-09-12 17:00 | Biblioteca La Pira – Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose, Via degli Schioppettieri, 25, Palermo
ITSERR researcher Ivana Panzeca (University of Palermo) took part in the seminar “Forme ed espressioni dell’aristotelismo nella tradizione araba”, held at the Giorgio La Pira Library and Research Centre of the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose in Palermo. The two‑day event, organised in collaboration with the Master’s degree programme Religioni e Culture (LM‑64) and the Department of Culture and Society of the University of Palermo, brought together scholars including Jawdath Jabbour, Cristina Cerami, Silvia Di Vincenzo, Rosanna Budelli, Francesca Badini and Stefano Di Pietrantonio to explore how Aristotelian thought was interpreted and transmitted in the medieval Arab‑Islamic world; Panzeca chaired the opening session and presented her research on the Arab‑Persian translations of Aristotle’s De Anima and their pseudoepigraphic tradition.
See the full programme.

Summer School “AI for Religious Studies: Unlocking Knowledge”
2025-09-08 08:00 - 2025-09-12 17:00 | Università degli Studi di Palermo e Biblioteca e Centro di ricerca “Giorgio La Pira”, PALERMO, PALERMO (PA)
The PNRR ITSERR – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE project promotes, from 8 to 12 September 2025, the Summer School AI for Religious Studies: Unlocking Knowledge, designed for the doctoral students of the DREST – National PhD Program in Religious Studies, and hosted by the “Giorgio La Pira” Research Library (FSCIRE) and the University of Palermo.
The Summer School is a key moment for ITSERR: an opportunity to showcase and test the potential of the digital tools and services developed by the project, while fostering interdisciplinary dialogue on religious studies in the era of Digital Humanities.
View the detailed: Programma Summer School
📩For information and organizational details: summerschoolitserr2025@itserr.it

IEEE 2025_International Conference on Cyber Humanities
2025-09-08 08:00 - 2025-09-10 17:00 | Fondazione CR Firenze Innovation Center, Lungarno Soderini, 21, Firenze, Italy
ITSERR took part in the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Humanities, in Florence, with the paper “ReCoptic: Computer Vision for the Reconstruction of Dismembered Coptic Codices”, presented by Fabrizio Sebastiani, scientific coordinator of the ITSERR project and co‑authored with Lorenzo Bianchi, Fabrizio Falchi, Alejandro Moreo and Costanza Bianchi.
The contribution applies advanced computer vision techniques to the reconstruction of dismembered Coptic codices, opening up new possibilities for the study and preservation of ancient manuscripts and demonstrating the potential of AI‑based methods for Digital Humanities and manuscript studies. At IEEE CH 2025, “ReCoptic: Computer Vision for the Reconstruction of Dismembered Coptic Codices” received the Best Research Paper Award, an international recognition that highlights the excellence of ITSERR researchers in the fields of Digital Humanities, artificial intelligence and interdisciplinary research on cultural heritage.
For more information, see the workshop programme.

25th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament (IOSOT)
2025-08-11 08:00 - 2025-08-15 17:00 | Humboldt-University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Anna Mambelli took part in the 25th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament (IOSOT), held in Berlin, presenting the paper “The uBIQUity of Sacred Texts between Past and Future: Methodological Challenges and New Tools”.
The paper introduced the uBIQUity project, developed within ITSERR, which investigates the sacred texts of Christianity and Islam through large corpora of Greek, Latin and Arabic sources. By integrating computer science and the humanities, the project aims to develop tools capable of identifying biblical and Qur’anic quotations and allusions in later traditions.
For more information, see the conference programme.

Oxford Summer School 2025
2025-08-08 | St Anne’s College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Amina El Ganadi, ITSERR researcher, presented the paper “Reimagining Islamic Knowledge Classification: Evaluating Culturally Adaptive LLMs for Arabic-Script Libraries” at The Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School 2025. Her contribution examined how ChatGPT can support the categorisation of an Islamic digital library by leveraging incremental Machine Learning and Transfer Learning techniques, highlighting the model’s notable familiarity with Islamic knowledge and its ability to organise subjects hierarchically, from Qur’anic Studies to Modern Islamic Thought. At the same time, the paper discussed key challenges that emerged in this context – in particular issues of interpretability, generalisation, and hallucination – which remain crucial obstacles for the reliable use of large language models in Arabic-script library environments.

Slavic NLP 2025 – The 10th Workshop on Slavic Natural Language Processing
2025-07-31 | Austria Center Vienna, Vienna, Austria
ITSERR, took part in the 10th Workshop on Slavic Natural Language Processing, held in Vienna, with a contribution on the diachronic analysis of Church Slavonic. Maria Cassese presented the paper “DIACU: A dataset for the DIAchronic analysis of Church Slavonic”, co‑authored by Maria Cassese, Giovanni Puccetti, Marianna Napolitano and Andrea Esuli, which introduces DIACU, a new large‑scale dataset that aggregates and annotates 652 texts from different historical variants of Church Slavonic and related Slavic languages to support both linguistic research and machine‑learning approaches to temporal and regional attribution. For more information, see the workshop programme.

#EUARE2025
2025-07-09 - 2025-07-10 | University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
ITSERR took part in the European Academy of Religion annual conference (#EuARe2025) held in Vienna, contributing with two panels dedicated to methodological and technological developments in Religious Studies.
The panel “Technology and the Transformation of Scholarship: Software and Tools for the Study of Religions”, proposed and chaired by Francesca Cadeddu, brought together S. Aftar, I. Ali, C. Palillo, M. Costa, A. El Ganadi, G. Ferrandino, F. Iezzi, A. Mariani, M. Napolitano, I. Panzeca, G. Puccetti, F. Ruozzi, E. Scapini, S. Shahnawaz, I. Spanò and L. Timpers. Speakers presented research results developed within ITSERR, discussing how digital tools, new datasets and artificial intelligence are reshaping methods, sources and research questions in Religious Studies, also in relation to the development of new research resources and practices.
The panel “New Perspectives in the Research on Intertextuality”, proposed by D. Dainese and A. Mambelli and chaired by L. Bigoni, brought together S. Abram, L. Carnevale, L. Cerioni, R. Fedriga, G. Hermanin De Reichenfeld, C. Marras, L. Mellerin, A. Rotondo and M. Zanella. Contributions presented ITSERR research on intertextuality, with particular attention to ancient works and the processes of textual transmission and interpretation.
The two panels highlighted ITSERR’s role in fostering innovation in Religious Studies through the development of tools and resources and the advancement of methodological approaches.
For more information, see the conference programme.

ITSERR at #EuARe2025: Panel on Digital Tools and Technologies for the Study of Religions
2025-07-09 | University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
ITSERR – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE – will take part in the European Academy of Religion annual conference (#EuARe2025) in Vienna with the panel:
Technology and the Transformation of Scholarship: Software and Tools for the Study of Religions
The panel will present the outcomes of ITSERR’s interdisciplinary work in Religious Studies and Information Technologies. It will explore how digital tools and new technologies are transforming the study of religion, responding to the needs of scholars across disciplines and research traditions.
The panel includes an introduction and four thematic sessions:

Digital Humanities and non-Latin scripts
Understanding the meaning, identifying the tool
(Re)Composing datasets
Artificial Intelligence and Religious Studies

The initiative reflects ITSERR’s mission to support research innovation in the study of religions through cutting-edge digital infrastructure.
📄 View the full panel programme
