I know it as I know that my name is L.W.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty [1969], § 328)

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Name: Luigi Walt.

Vintage year: 1975.

Provenance: Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy.

Civil status: Happily engaged, thanks.

How I spend my life: I teach History of Religions at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (Italy), where I also enjoy practicing the noble art of the footnote (bibliography, commentary, cross-referencing, digression, gossip, scribble etc.). For more details, you can look at my tedious Research Portfolio.

Main research areas: Cultural history of biblical and apocryphal texts; History of ancient Mediterranean religions; Method and theory in the comparative study of religion (anthropology of religion; orality and literacy studies; ancient and modern theories of theories of religion).

Academic degrees: Ph.D. in “Religious Studies: Social Sciences and Historical Studies of Religions” (Univ. of Bologna, 2008); qualified as Associate Professor in History of Religions (Italian ASN – II, SC 11/A4, SSD M-STO/06 – HIST-04/A).

Professional ethics: In the wake of Jonathan Z. Smith, I am convinced that the first task of the historian is to complicate rather than simplify – and nowhere more so than in the study of religion. Historians should strive to celebrate “the diversity of manners, the variety of species, the opacity of things.”

Academic affiliations: Association pour l’étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne (AELAC), Centro Italiano di Studi Superiori sulle Religioni (CISSR), Consulta Universitaria per la Storia delle Religioni (CUSR), European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), Societas Spinozana (SocSpi), Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS).