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.

Birth year: 1975.

Provenance: Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy.

Civil status: Happily engaged, thanks.

How I spend my life: I work as a Senior Researcher in History of Religions at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (Italy), where I 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: History of religions in the Hellenistic-Roman period (with a focus on early Jewish and Christian groups); Cultural history of biblical and apocryphal texts; Method and theory in the comparative study of religion (anthropology of religions; orality and literacy studies; 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).

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 religions. 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), Centre for Advanced Studies “Beyond Canon” (CASBC), Centro Italiano di Studi Superiori sulle Religioni / Italian Centre for Advanced Studies on Religions (CISSR), European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), Societas Spinozana (SocSpi), Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS).