site.btaAlessandro Maria Bruni Elected New Foreign Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Prof. Alessandro Maria Bruni was elected as a new foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) by the Assembly of Academicians, the Academy said on Thursday.

Prof. Bruni was born on September 9, 1978, in Rome. He works in the fields of Byzantine and Slavic paleography, codicology, textology, historical linguistics, and hymnography, as well as Georgian studies. He specialized under some of the most distinguished medievalists, including Prof. Enrica Follieri in Rome and Prof. Boris Fonkic in Moscow.

Until 2024, he was a professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and after that, at the University of Naples L’Orientale, which today is the largest Italian center for the study and research of foreign languages and cultures.

Prof. Bruni delivers lectures in Austria, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Georgia, Italy, Russia, the US, and other countries. He is currently leading two major projects. One is dedicated to the development of texts in the oldest Christian Slavic manuscript traditions, extensively addressing the issues of important Old Bulgarian original and translated works, such as the lives of Saints Cyril and Methodius, "On the Letters" by Chernorizets Hrabar, Old Bulgarian translations of certain Old Testament books, and others. The other project focuses on the study of Slavic Cyrillic manuscripts using artificial intelligence.

Prof. Bruni’s significant scientific contributions, particularly in the field of Bulgarian studies, can be categorized into four main directions: the study of the writings of one of the most authoritative medieval authors and Church Fathers, Gregory the Theologian (circa 330 – circa 390); Old Bulgarian translations of biblical books intended not for liturgical use but for private reading; research of the earliest known hymnographic book, which was widely distributed until the 12th century in the Eastern Christian world; and the introduction of a previously unused methodological approach in the study of Old Bulgarian texts.