ITSERR took part in the XXXVII International Conference of the Italian Association for Jewish Studies (AISG), held in Ravenna on 9 –10 September 2024, entitled “New Paths and Topics in Jewish Studies Research.” During the conference, Andrea Ravasco (University of Palermo) presented the paper “The Application of Artificial Intelligence to the Study of the Babylonian ... Read more

The ADI (Associazione di Italianistica) National Conference was held in Palermo, during the event, Marco Papasidero (University of Palermo) presented his talk "L'immagine del 'saraceno' in alcune leggende mariane di prima età moderna (secc. XVI-XVIII)." His research examines how Marian legends from the 16th to 18th centuries depicted the figure of the 'Saracen,' offering new ... Read more

Marco Papasidero (University of Palermo) took part in the Seminario dottorale di Storia medievale at the University of Messina, where he presented his talk "Demoni, santi e tempeste sovrannaturali. Appunti per una storia culturale." His presentation focused on how believers sought saintly intercession to ensure favorable weather or ward off storms, while Vincenzo Tedesco examined the demonological ... Read more

Riccardo Amerigo Vigliermo (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) participated in the 28th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2024), presenting the paper "Sensitive Topics Retrieval in Digital Libraries: A Case Study of ḥadīṯ Collections". Co-authored with Giovanni Sullutrone, Luca Sala, and Sonia Bergamaschi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), the ... Read more

Our colleague, Giuseppe Cartella (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) participated in the 3rd International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Digital Humanities (AI4DH), presenting the paper "Pixels of Faith: Exploiting Visual Saliency to Detect Religious Image Manipulation." Co-authored with Vittorio Cuculo, Marcella Cornia (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Marco Papasidero (University of Palermo), Federico ... Read more

Federico Cocchi and Marcella Cornia (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) participated in the 18th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2024), presenting the paper "Safe-CLIP: Removing NSFW Concepts from Vision-and-Language Models." The study addresses the challenge of enhancing the safety of vision-and-language models, such as CLIP, by reducing their sensitivity to NSFW (not safe ... Read more

Within the framework of the Annual Meeting on Christian Origins our colleagues Anna Mambelli and Davide Dainese of ITSERR (Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE) participate with the following paper dedicated to the research leaded within the WP8: "Resilient Septuagint and uBIQUity: Interrelated Research Projects on Sacred Texts and their Heritages in the Digital ... Read more

ITSERR has organized its own fourth plenary meeting on the 23 and 24 of October to present the state of the art of the project and to offer to its team members a training program. ITSERR is the Italian project aimed at enhancing the RESILIENCE Research Infrastructure, whose high interdisciplinarity is finalized to meet the ... Read more

Marco Papasidero (University of Palermo) will speak at the seminar "Santi scrittori in digitale", part of the permanent seminar series I Santi internauti. His talk, "Ildegarda spirituale: letture, riletture e reinterpretazioni della Sibilla del Reno sul Web", will explore the digital reception and reinterpretation of Hildegard of Bingen’s spiritual legacy.

  Riccardo Amerigo Vigliermo (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) participated in the 2024 Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) Annual Meeting, presenting the paper "The Digital Maktaba Project: Building an Intelligent System for Cataloguing Non-Latin Script HeritagesT". The Digital Maktaba (DM) project, developed within ITSERR and funded by PNRR, focuses on AI-driven cataloguing and metadata ... Read more

At EMNLP 2024, Sania Aftarha presented RoBERT2VecTM: A Novel Approach for Topic Extraction in Islamic Studies, co-authored by Luca Gagliardelli, Amina El Ganadi, Federico Ruozzi, and Sonia Bergamaschi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) The study introduces RoBERT2VecTM, combining RoBERTa and Doc2Vec to enhance topic modeling in Hadith studies. The approach improves semantic analysis, generating ... Read more

Federico Ruozzi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) and Domenico Ciccarello (University of Palermo) presented the paper "Digital Maktaba: Enhancing Library Inclusivity through Automated Knowledge Extraction from Multi-Alphabet Digital Collections" at the AIB national conference "Niente su di noi, senza di noi. Biblioteche per l’inclusione." The Digital Maktaba project leverages AI-driven technologies like OCR, NLP, ... Read more

Davide Caffagni (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) participated in the 35th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), presenting the paper "Revisiting Image Captioning Training Paradigm via Direct CLIP-based Optimization", co-authored with Nicholas Moratelli, Marcella Cornia, Lorenzo Baraldi, and Rita Cucchiara (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia). The paper introduces Direct CLIP-Based Optimization (DiCO), a novel ... Read more

At FLLM 2024, Amina El Ganadi (University of Palermo) presented the paper The Impact of Generative AI on Islamic Studies: Case Analysis of "Digital Muhammad ibn Ismail Al-Bukhari", co-authored by Sania Aftar, Luca Gagliardelli, Sonia Bergamaschi, and Federico Ruozzi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia). The study explores the role of generative AI in Islamic ... Read more

    "Digital Humanities, Artificial Intelligence and Religious Studies: initial research perspectives" December 2, 2024, the Workshop “Digital Humanities, Artificial Intelligence and Religious Studies: first research perspectives” will be held in Room 3.3 of Building 14, Viale delle Scienze, Palermo. The event is part of the PNRR project ITSERR - Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI ... Read more

The Fifth Training Event of the ITSERR project in Turin: at the center of Innovation and Interdisciplinary Research in the filedwork of  Religious Studies On 14 and 15 January 2025, the Department of Historical Studies (Palazzo Nuovo) of the University of Turin will host the fifth training and update event on the progress of the ... Read more

At the recent CNR-DSU conference for research infrastructures in the Social, Human, and Cultural Heritage Sciences, Francesca Cadeddu (Fscire) highlighted how RESILIENCE can benefit from the prototyping and testing of ITSERR’s Market Place.     Held in Rome, the conference was organized by the CNR-DSU to promote research excellence at national and European levels by ... Read more

Ilaria Sabbatini (University of Palermo) participated in the international conference "Multimedioevo. Storie medievali e linguaggi multimediali fra XX e XXI secolo" with her paper: "Teaching Medieval Sources in the Age of Digital Intelligence". The conference explored the intersection of medieval studies and multimedia languages, highlighting the role of digital tools in historical research and education.

Amina El Ganadi (University of Palermo) presented her paper "Digital Maktaba Project: Proposing a Metadata-Driven Framework for Arabic Library Digitization" at the 21st Conference on Information and Research Science Connecting to Digital and Library Science. Her research explores innovative metadata strategies for digitizing Arabic library collections, contributing to the advancement of digital library science.

Irfan Ali (University of Palermo) and Amina El Ganadi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) participated in the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, presenting their research on AI applications in linguistic and textual analysis. Irfan Ali introduced ABBIE: Attention-Based BI-Encoders for Predicting Where to Split Compound Sanskrit Words, a deep learning approach ... Read more

  The Department of Cultures and Society at the University of Palermo recently hosted two seminars led by Prof. Pedro Ramirez Rueda (University of Barcelona), the first scholar to visit the University of Palermo with a TNA grant as part of the ITSERR project. The first seminar focused on Miguel de Molinos’ Spiritual Guide and ... Read more

On April 10–11, 2025, the ITSERR project hosted its sixth in-house training event at the Institute of Information Science and Technologies “A. Faedo” (ISTI-CNR) in Pisa. The two-day meeting brought together project members and international experts for updates on the state of the project and advanced training on key topics at the intersection of Digital ... Read more

On May 14, the Faedo Lecture Hall at ISTI-CNR will host the seminar “Arabic Multimodal Language Modeling”, presented by Hawau Olamide Toyin, a PhD student in Natural Language Processing at the Mohammed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). Hawau Olamide Toyin is a visiting scholar at ISTI-CNR thanks to a TNA (Transnational Access) grant, ... Read more

As part of the activities of the Laboratory of Bibliography and Online Historical Research, the Master’s Degree Programme in Historical, Anthropological and Geographical Studies, and the ITSERR Research Project, a seminar will be held by Walter Quattrociocchi (University of Rome “La Sapienza”) on the topic: Online Social Dynamics. Between Fake News and Historical Interpretation. The seminar will address ... Read more

An opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange on the role of artificial intelligence in the study of texts, libraries, and archives. The seminar brings together scholars working in the fields of Digital Humanities, philosophy of language, and history of ideas. With a focus on the activities of uBIQUity – WP8 of the PNRR ITSERR project, the event ... Read more

As part of the National Open Access (NOA) mobility program of the ITSERR project, the seminar titled “AI and Religious Studies: New Perspectives and Applications for the Study of Talmud Bavli and the Corpus Iuris Canonici” will be held on 10 June 2025 at FSCIRE – Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose, in Bologna. The event ... Read more

On June 12–13, the “Enzo Ferrari” Department of Engineering at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia will host the seventh in-house training of the PNRR-funded ITSERR project – Italian Strengthening of the ESFRI RI RESILIENCE. This training event will offer a moment of shared learning and dialogue, focusing on the results achieved in the ... Read more

On July 9, 2025, 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 ... Read more

  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 ... Read more

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 ... Read more

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 ... Read more

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 ... Read more

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: ... Read more

    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 ... Read more

From 19 to 23 October 2025, the 44th Course of the International School of Ius Commune took place in Erice, Sicily, under the title “Legal, cultural and religious pluralism: aspects and problems in the tradition of the ‘ius commune’.” During the event, Roberto Imperia (University of Palermo), ITSERR researcher, presented his latest study: Il “Corpus ... Read more