Celeste Gianni

I conduct research in the fields of Arabic literature and manuscript studies, with a focus on the circulation of Arabic manuscripts and the history of collections in the late Ottoman era until the end of WWII. I am also a lecturer of Arabic Literature and History of the Arabic Language at the University of Macerata and of Arabic Literature at the University of Bologna, in Italy. I obtained an MA (2011) and PhD in Arabic Literature (2018) at SOAS, University of London, with a thesis entitled “Poetics of the catalogue: library catalogues in the Arab provinces of the late Ottoman Empire”. After my PhD, I worked as a Research Assistant on the ERC project ‘Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern World’ at Oxford University, and as Cataloguer of Arabic Manuscripts at HMML (Minnesota, US).

Research interests

My current research centres on Arab Christian manuscript collectors in the late Ottoman era until the end of WWII, and how their work as collectors, cataloguers, and intellectuals reflects issues of religious identity, national identity, sectarianism, and the struggle with European colonialism.