Silvia Ronchey

Silvia Ronchey (born 1958) is an Italian author, byzantinist, and professor in the Department of Humanistic Studies at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre in Rome, Italy.
Biography.
After studying at the Universities of Pisa ("Laurea" in Classics, 1981) and Florence (PhD in Byzantine Philology, 1989), Ronchey completed her paleographical training at the Libraries of the Monastery of St. John the Theologian in Patmos and of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Alexandria, Egypt. In the early nineties she conducted extended periods of research at the Centre de Recherches d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance of the Collège de France in Paris and the Dumbarton Oaks Institute of Byzantine Studies in Washington D.C., where she collaborated with Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan.
Ronchey’s publications include monographs focusing on Byzantine literature, history, and civilization, as well as their "Nachleben" in modernity and the contemporary age. Ronchey’s major foci of interest include Michael Psellus, Eustathius of Thessaloniki, the "Barlaam and Ioasaph", and Bessarion. In addition, over the last thirty years, Silvia Ronchey is the scholar who has delved most thoroughly into the figure of Hypatia of Alexandria, researching her ethical, philosophical, religious, and political character, as well as the circumstances of her assassination.
Ronchey has authored and hosted cultural tv and radio shows in Italy, and conducted interviews with some of the major cultural figures of recent decades, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, James Hillman, Ernst Jünger, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and Elémire Zolla.
Her encounter with James Hillman, in particular, initiated a long-running collaboration, resulting in several television interviews and three books: "L’anima del mondo", "Il piacere di pensare", and "L’ultima immagine", Hillman’s last published work.