Federiciana Federica Nicolardi among ERC Synergy Grant winners.

Federica Nicolardi, an associate in Papyrology at the Department of Humanities at the University of Naples Federico II, is among the winners of more than €11.5 million in European funding under the ERC Synergy Grant call for the UnLost project.

The Neapolitan research unit will coordinate the project for the next six years, with Nicolardi as Corresponding Principal Investigator and the University of Naples Federico II as Corresponding Host Institution. Combining and further developing state-of-the-art techniques, but also using completely new and non-invasive scanning and analysis methods, the researchers want to recover what is still hidden from the Library of the Villa of the Papyri, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The project's central partner is the "Vittorio Emanuele III" National Library of Naples, which preserves almost all of the Herculaneum papyri that have come down to us.

Along with Nicolardi, completing the international team that won the funding are Brent Seales professor of Computer Science in the College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky, and Vincent Christlein, senior researcher and head of Pattern's Computer Vision team.

"Found in the ancient city of Herculaneum, these charred papyrus scrolls exist in their materiality as archaeological objects, but in many ways are still inaccessible to us today," Nicolardi explains. The project will focus on both the scrolls that have never yet been opened and those opened over the centuries using mechanical techniques, which in many cases have failed to unearth the entire text. A key breakthrough for the reading of unopened papyri occurred in 2023 as part of the Vesuvius Challenge, of which Seales is one of the creators.

This project is part of the long and flourishing tradition of Herculaneum papyrology in Naples, which has been strengthened around the International Center for the Study of Herculaneum Papyri (CISPE), founded by Marcello Gigante in 1969 and now named after him. "Being able to read and reconstruct new texts in a potentially integral form," comments Francesca Longo Auricchio, president emeritus ddel CISPE, "means being able to better define and specify the contents of the library (the only Greek and Latin library of the Roman era to have come down to us from Antiquity) and expand our knowledge of philosophical currents such as Epicureanism and Stoicism, whose texts, prior to the discovery of the Herculaneum papyri, were known to us only from indirect tradition."

"This is the most important funding so far awarded for the study of the Herculaneum papyri, which will allow for results that were unimaginable until recently," stresses Giovanni Indelli, president of CISPE.

"This funding," adds Giuliana Leone, professor of Papyrology at the Federico II University and secretary of CISPE, "rewards the teamwork and international cooperation that has always animated the activities of the Center founded by Gigante.

Gianluca Del Mastro, professor of Papyrology at the University of Campania L. Vanvitelli, speaks of "an important acceleration of our studies but, more generally, of our knowledge of the ancient world."

The Director of the Department of Humanities, Professor Andrea Mazzucchi, congratulates "on the prestigious recognition obtained with the award of an ERC Sinergy Grant in the field of papyrology, a field that already boasts an excellent tradition of studies in our University and that has also recently obtained, with Dr. Marzia D'Angelo, the recognition of an FIS. This is an extraordinarily important achievement that rewards not only the scientific excellence of Prof. Nicolardi and the Neapolitan papyrologists, but also their passion, dedication and ability to propose innovative and interdisciplinary research in a field that is as specialized as it is crucial for understanding the ancient world. This success," he points out, "represents a source of pride for the Department of Humanities, whose project of excellence has identified transdisciplinary research aimed at a responsible digital and computational transition of humanistic knowledge as one of its main objectives, while preserving the lucid awareness that the potential of these new technologies can offer valuable results only if grafted onto a solid and critical ownership of the traditional and idiosyncratic epistemological paradigms of the studia humanitatis.