Marco Perale is a Classicist and a Papyrologist who specializes in post-classical poetry, especially hexameter poetry on papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt.
Before obtaining a PhD in Literary Papyrology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, he worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Copenhagen (2010). He was then a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Minnesota (2011-2012) and held a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Oxford (2012-2015). He joined the University of Liverpool in 2013 as the J.P. Postgate Fellow and was then a University Teacher (2016-2020) before taking up a Lectureship in Classics at the same university. He is currently on research leave at the University of Barcelona as Ramón y Cajal Fellow.
Dr Perale published widely on the transmission and circulation of Greek literature in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and edited new papyrus texts from several collections worldwide, including the Carlsberg Papyrus Collection in Copenhagen, the Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna Papyrussammlungen, Liverpool’s World Museum, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and the Istituto G. Vitelli in Florence. His main research project is a four-volume corpus of anonymous hexameter poems on papyri, which includes astronomical, astrological, and technical poetry. While at ISAW, jointly with Alexander Jones, he will research a number of unpublished papyri from the Berlin Papyrussammlung, including a new astrological treatise, a text with astrological prognostications, and a medical recipe.
Key publications:
Perale, M. (2020) Adespota Papyracea Hexametra Graeca. Hexameters of Unknown or Uncertain Authorship from Graeco-Roman Egypt, vol. 1 (W. De Gruyter)
Jones, A., Perale, M. (forthcoming), ‘PSI inv. 3780 + P.Med. inv. 124. An Elaborate Horoscope with Personal Forecasts’, Papiri della Società Italiana (Edizioni dell’Istituto Papirologico G. Vitelli)