Dr Cristiano Amendola (associate research fellow January-December 2020)

Cristiano Amendola is an associate research fellow on the SKILLNET project. He holds a BA in Modern Literature and an MA in Italian philology from Federico II University of Naples. In 2018 he received his PhD degree at Liège University, with a dissertation that focused on the rhetorical and literary strategies through which Italian scholars structured their epistolary communication during the 15^th and 16^th centuries. During his PhD track, he was also a digital fellow for Early Modern Letters Online, the database of the Cultures of Knowledge project (Oxford University), and digital editor of Giorgio Vasari’s correspondence for the EpistolART project (Université de Liège). He is currently working on the Human_IT database (Itinerari delle idee attraverso la loro realizzazione linguistica: il codice epistolare erudito tra formulario retorico e tòpoi), a project funded by the University of Basilicata in cooperation with the CAB (Centro di Ateneo per le Biblioteche dell’Università di Napoli Federico II). The main aim of Human_IT is to analyze the humanist communicative code, with specific attention to the rhetorical-argumentative strategies by which knowledge is transmitted in epistolary communication. He is also preparing a critical edition of the 15^th-century vernacular manual on letter writing, the Formulario di lettere missive e responsive of Bartolomeo Miniatore, the oldest manual in the Italian history of epistolography.