Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Licia Buttà is Full Professor of Medieval Art History at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona; she holds a PhD in Medieval Art History from the University of Barcelona; a specialization in Archaeology and Art History from the University of Siena; and a degree in Classical Studies from the University of Palermo. She has carried out postdoctoral stays at the Warburg Institute in London (Postdoctoral Fellowship BE-DGR [2009 BE-1 00275] and José Castillejo Fellowship [CAS14/00441]) in 2010 and 2015, and more recently in 2024. She has also been Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris in 2021 (“Salvador de Madariaga” Programme 2019, PRX19/00603) and at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University in 2025. She has taught at the universities of Barcelona, Copenhagen, Trento and Agadir, among others. She is the author of Immaginare il potere. Il soffitto dipinto della Sala Magna di Palazzo Chiaromonte Steri e la cultura letteraria e artistica a Palermo nel Trecento (2022), co-funded by the ICMA-Kress Foundation Grant for Research and Publication and winner of the AFCEMS Book Prize as Best Book on Medieval Art 2023 – Center for Early Medieval Studies (Brno). She is co-author of El retaule-tabernacle de Santa Maria de l’Estrella de la Catedral de Tortosa. Memoria Artium 31, 2023, El teatre del cos. Dansa, espectacle i rituals a la Corona d’Aragó / Il teatro del corpo. Danza, spettacolo e rituali nella Corona d’Aragona (2022), and editor of Narrazione, exempla, retorica. Studi sull'iconografia dei soffitti dipinti nel Medioevo Mediterraneo (Palermo, 2013), as well as editor of several special issues in academic journals. Her articles have been published in indexed journals such as Storia dell’arte, Ricerche di Storia dell’arte, Paragone, Goya, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, Perspective: Actualité en Histoire de l’Art, among others. Since 2010 she has been the Coordinator of the URV research group ICONODANZA and has been Principal Investigator of the following research projects: “Traces and Forms of Dance in the Long Middle Ages: Iconographic, Textual and Ethnographic Corpus in the Iberian Peninsula and Its Ibero-American Projection” (2014–2017, FFI2013-42939-P) and “Choreutic Heterotopias, Dance and Performance in the Visual and Literary Culture of the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages” (HAR2017-85625-P, 2018–2021). She is also a member of the interdisciplinary group (Consolidated Research Group SGR 2021 00970) NEXUS/LAIREM: Literature, Art and Representation in the Long Middle Ages (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), IP dr. Maria Morràs. She currently leads the project MUDANZA. Dancing Women. Idolatry and Rituals: Visual Culture and Cultural History of Dance during the Long Middle Ages (PID2022-140028NB-100, 2023–2026), funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Since 2022 she has been a Collaborator of the Division for Coordination, Evaluation and Scientific and Technical Monitoring of the Spanish State Research Agency (Manager of the scientific area: Culture: Philology, Literature and Art – FLA).

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Francesc Massip Bonet has got a PhD in History of Art and in Catalan Philology and is Full Professor of History of Theatre at Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona. He was visiting professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico (UNAM). He has published fifteen books and hundreds of articles on Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque theatre as well as on Popular Theatre and Folkloric Traditions. He has been awarded the Massó i Torrens prize (1987) and Jaume I prize (1990) of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. He has been President of the Société Internationale pour l'Étude du Théâtre Médiéval. Coordinator of the LAiREM Consolidated Research Group (2017 SGR 1514).

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Raül Sanchis Francés, PhD in Humanistic Studies (Universitat Rovira i Virgili). He has taught in secondary education and at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Since 2014, he has been a member of international research groups LAiREM and ICONODANSA (URV). He also collaborates with the LLICVALSOR (Universitat de València). He is the author of several books and articles. He has been awarded the 5th Rafael Tudó Prize for Catalan Dance (2018) and the 35th Valeri Serra i Boldú Prize for Popular Culture (2020). Currently, his studies deal with festive otherness, the presence of marginal characters in popular dance and theatre, medieval and modern historiography and the history of mentalities.

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Maria del Mar Valls Fusté is a Juan de la Cierva’ researcher and lecturer at the Department of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid (2024-present). She is a member of the research groups ICONODANSA. Iconography of Dance in the Middle Ages, directed by Dr. Licia Buttà (URV) and ARQIMED. Architecture and Integration of the Arts in the Middle Ages (ref. 941377), codirected by Dr. Olga Pérez Monzón (UCM) and Dr. Susana Calvo Capilla (UCM). She holds a PhD in Humanistic Studies (2021) (International Mention and Extraordinary Doctoral Award) and a degree in Art History (2013) from the Rovira i Virgili University, with a master’s degree in advanced studies in Art History from Barcelona’ University (2016). Her interest in medieval visual culture in the Western Mediterranean has led her to develop two parallel and often complementary lines of work: the analysis of medieval choreutic images, and the study of artistic transfers between Al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, with special attention to the artistic panorama of the Crown of Aragon during the 13th and 15th centuries. She has completed research stays at the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art in Paris (2019) and The Warburg Institute in London (2024-2025). Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and she has participated in dozens of national and international academic forums. Institutional CV (UCM webpage): https://www.ucm.es/historiadelarte/maria-del-mar-valls-fuste Academia.edu (publications and conferences): https://ucm.academia.edu/MariadelMarVallsFust%C3%A9 ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2111-3955

Università di Verona

History PhD at the Università di Pisa, has taught Early Modern History at the Università di Verona (2002-2025). He is a former Chair of the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH) and the current President of the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sulla Danza (AIRDanza). He is the author of a reference book on the methodology and historiography of cultural history (Cultural History: A Concise Introduction, 2012) and, among other publications, co-editor, with Jörg Rogge and Hannu Salmi, of The Routledge Companion to Cultural History in the Western World (2020) and, with Marion Kant, of A Cultural History of Western Dance (6 vols, forthcoming). His other monographs are: Davide o Salomè? Il dibattito europeo sulla danza nella prima età moderna (2000), Recreation in the Renaissance: Attitudes towards Leisure and Pastimes in European Culture, 1425-1675 (2003), L’altro che danza. Il villano, il selvaggio, la strega nell’immaginario della prima età moderna (2018) and Renaissance Dream Cultures (2025). Among other topics he studies gesture and emotions.

EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris

Adrien Belgrano holds a PhD in History and Civilizations from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). After completing preparatory classes for the grandes écoles at the Lycée Thiers in Marseille (2007–2010), he earned a Master's degree at EHESS (2010–2012). He later defended his doctoral dissertation in 2023 on the history of medieval dance, under the supervision of Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu (CNRS). The dissertation was awarded both the EHESS Thesis Prize and the Borsa di Studio Ilaria Caccia. He also passed the agrégation in History in 2014. His research explores medieval dance in connection with French vernacular literature (langues d’oïl) and preaching. He is particularly interested in dance vocabulary, the social practices surrounding dance, and the embodied experience it involves—through gestures, emotions, and sensory engagement. He is a member of the Iconodansa group and a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the MUDANZA research project (PID2022-140028NB-100). He has published several scholarly articles and book chapters, including the section on the Middle Ages in the Nouvelle Histoire de la Danse en Occident, edited by Laura Cappelle. He also actively engages in public scholarship on the history of medieval dance through media appearances and publications, such as the Passion médiévistes podcast (2024). He has presented his research at numerous international conferences, including the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (2025). CV CRH : https://crh.ehess.fr/index.php?9584 ORCID : https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7382-7889

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Full Professor of History of Christianity and Churches at the University of Florence; graduated At University of Siena, obtained my doctorate at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and completed my post-doctorate at the Centro di Alti Studi Religiosi in Piacenza. I was a fellow with the Mission Historique Française en Allemagne at the Max Planck Institut in Göttingen and after fellow at the Ecole Française de Rome. Currently I am member of the Laboratoire d'études sur les monothéismes - UMR 8584 in Paris, Senior Fellow and Academic Staff Member of the Medici Archive Project, Florence office; Fellow of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris and affiliated researcher of the CNR-ISEM. I collaborated and continue to collaborate with national and international research teams, including two ongoing projects: ‘MUDANZA. Dancing women, idolatry and rituals: visual culture and cultural history of dance during the long Middle Ages’, at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, P.I. Licia Buttà, and the ‘ERC PRIMA ‘Manuscripts in the Age of Print’, P.I. Elena Pierazzo, Université of Tours. In Italy, I am director the research project ‘Il Tribunale dell'Inquisizione di Santa Croce a Firenze’ (The Inquisition Tribunal of Santa Croce in Florence) with Emanuela Ferretti (DIDA University of Florence) and ‘Religion et science: les religieuses et les connaissances en matière de santé en Toscane (XIVe-XVIe siècles’ at Laboratoire d’Etudes sur les Monothèismes di Parigi, équipe 4 “Institutions et doctrines religieuses”. I am the editor in chief of the academic journal “Storia delle Donne” and of two book series: ‘Fragmentaria’, published by Firenze University Press, and ‘Topografie Immateriali’, published by SEF. My scientific research focuses on the history of religious phenomena and ecclesiastical institutions (Middle Ages-Modern Age), the history of women and gender, and the relationship between religions and sciences.

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Giulia Di Pierro is a PhD student at the Department of Art History at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona (2023-present) and member of the research group MUDANZA Women Dancing Idolatry and Rituals: Visual Culture and Cultural History of Dance in the Middle Ages and ICONODANSA. Iconography of Dance in the Middle Ages both directed by Dr. Licia Buttà (URV). She holds a degree in Art History from the Università di Roma La Sapienza (2021-2022) (Award “Ilaria Caccia” V edition, 2024). She collaborated in the writing of the catalog dedicated to the manuscripts of the Library of Federico da Montefeltro in collaboration with the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo (ISIM) and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (2022-2023). Her research focuses on the history and iconography of dance and gestures in medieval culture, with particular attention to the dance of the personification of the sin of Lust in medieval manuscripts of Prudentius' Psychomachia. She has completed research stays at the Università di Bologna (2024) and The Warburg Institute in London (2024). She has presented her research and results at international conferences, including the annual EADH-European Association for Dance History Conference (2024) and the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (2025). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1759-2708

Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna

After earning degrees in the History of Christianity and in Latin Paleography, Donatella Tronca obtained a PhD in Cultural Heritage Studies. Her doctoral dissertation, awarded the “Barbara Sparti” Prize by AIRDanza – the Italian Association for Dance Research, was published as the volume Christiana choreia. Danza e cristianesimo tra Antichità e Medioevo (Rome, 2022). She has carried out research at the University of Verona, contributing to cataloguing and digitization projects on Late Antique and medieval manuscripts of patristic and canonical content preserved at the Cathedral Library (Biblioteca Capitolare). She is currently engaged in teaching and research at the University of Bologna – Ravenna Campus (Department of Cultural Heritage), where she teaches Christianity and Cultural Heritage and History of Christian Late Antiquity, and takes part in projects on the religious lexicon in the works of Dante Alighieri. At the University of Bologna she also coordinates Eurythmia, an international network devoted to the study of the cultural and religious history of dance. Her main research interests concern Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on historical-religious semantics, the history of manuscript transmission, and the material and immaterial Christian cultural heritage.

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

She holds a degree in Music Education and Musicology from the Liceu Conservatory in Barcelona. She received an Honours Award upon completing her degree in Musicology. DEA in Historical Musicology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2008 and Doctorate in Musicology – Excellent “cum laude” – from the University of Salamanca under the supervision of Dr Antonio Ezquerro Esteban (I.M.F - C.S.I.C), with a thesis entitled 'Antoni Milà: Three decades of devotional soundscape: A study of the chapel and the composer from Tarragona in the second half of the 18th century". As a researcher, her publications cover topics 1) in historical musicology, especially those related to music in Tarragona Cathedral: 18th-century Catalan liturgical and paraliturgical music, watermarks in musical manuscripts, and cataloguing of musical collections; 2) in ethnomusicology, related to the Obra del Cançoner Popular de Catalunya (Work of the Popular Songbook of Catalonia) and the morphology of traditional Catalan song; 3) teaching innovation. She is a Serra Húnter Lecturer and coordinator of the teaching staff in the Area of Musical Expression Didactics, in the Department of History and Art History at Rovira i Virgili University. She teaches at the Faculty of Education and Psychology Sciences, in the Early Childhood Education degree programme; Primary Education degree programme (with a specialisation in Music) and in the Double Degree programme in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education. She is also part of the inter-university master's degree (URV-UB-ESMUC): Music as an Interdisciplinary Art, where she tutors Master's Thesis projects. He combines his work at the URV with ongoing collaboration with the AHAT (Arxiu Històric Arxidiocesà de Tarragona) since 2010, where he catalogues musical collections. He has been a member of the IHMAGINE (International Heritage and Gender International Network) Research Group at the University of Salamanca since its creation in June 2017.

Universitat de Barcelona

Helena Gracià Castejón holds a degree in Art History and Archaeology from the Rovira i Virgili University (2023), where she received the "Extraordinary Academic Achievement Award". She completed a master's degree in Medieval Cultures at the University of Barcelona (2025) and is currently a PhD student in the same program, developing a dissertation on the contexts of diffusion and uses of the iconography of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio’s Lignum vitae. In 2019, she was awarded the Maria Josepa Massanes Prize by the Social Council of the Rovira i Virgili University for her high-school research project Contributions to a study of the roman site of Els Serdans (Alfara de Carles, Baix Ebre). She has presented her research at several international conferences, including the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2025) and the Leeds International Medieval Congress (2025). Helena is a member of the Iconodansa Research Group, affiliated with the Rovira i Virgili University, which focuses on figurative and textual representations of dance in the Middle Ages. Her research within the group explores the depiction of the moresca in fifteenth-century bone caskets, analizing the emotional and cultural dimensions of dance, and also the role of female dancers in depictions of the Feast of Ahasuerus. She is the author of the article “Pràctiques religioses i devocionals en els espais assistencials durant la baixa edat mitjana: curar-se amb Crist i altres maneres de consolar l’ànima” published in 2024 in SUMMA. Revista de Cultures Medievals.

Simmons University

Kathryn Dickason is a scholar and journalist based in Los Angeles. She researches Western medieval Christianity, with particular interests in dance, iconography, gender, French literature, Dante, and medievalism, as well as contemporary ecstatic dance. Dickason holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University, and also served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California and a residential research fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. Her first book, Ringleaders of Redemption: How Medieval Dance Became Sacred (Oxford University Press, 2021), explores the sacralization of medieval dance in Western Europe. In 2023, she guest edited a special double issue of postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, entitled “Legacies of Medieval Dance.” Currently, she is writing her second book on medieval dance iconography, tentatively entitled Wheeling Incarnation: Medieval Dance in the Visual Arts.

EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris.

Lecturer and Researcher at EHESS (École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) – Paris i el GAHOM (Groupe d'Anthropologie Historique de l'Occident Médiéval).

Tel Aviv University.

Lev Kapitaikin teaches Islamic arts in the Art History Department of Tel Aviv University, Israel. His research focuses on hybridity and transculturalism in the art Norman Sicily (1160-1194), in its intersections with the Islamic and the Mediterranean worlds. Kapitaikin gained D. Phil from Oxford University (2012). His doctoral dissertation were on the twelfth-century painted ‘Islamic’ ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo. He currently reworks into a book to be published in the Edinburgh University Press Islamic Art Series titled: Islamic Painting for A Christian King: The Twelfth-Century Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. His recent publications include: “The Daughter of al-Andalus: Interrelations of Norman Sicily and the Muslim West,” Al-Masaq 25 (2013), pp. 113-134; and “Sicily and the Staging of Multiculturalism,” In Blackwell’s Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, eds. Gülru Necipo?lu and Finbarr B. Flood, Oxford: Wiley, forthcoming September 2016.

Università degli Studi di Palermo

Angela Bellia is full professor of archeomusicology at Palermo University. She carried out her research in Italy, France, Switzerland, and the USA. Thanks to a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, she worked at the Institute of Fine Arts at the New York University, devoting my attentions towards the reconstruction of the performative dimension at Selinunte. More recently, thanks to a second Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, she carried out her research at the Institute for Archaeological and Monumental Heritage at the National Research Council in Italy, devoting my attentions towards archaeoacoustics and archaeology of sound. She received the Prize ITWIIN 2016 for the most “Exceptionally Creative Woman” and the Special Recognition Award 2017 for “Ingenious & Innovative Achievements” by the European International Women Inventors & Innovators Network. She also received the Italian national qualification to be an Associate Professor in Archaeology.

angbellia@gmail.com

Università di Bologna

Angelica Montanari has a degree in Medieval History and a PhD in Anthropology of the Medieval West at the École des Hautes Études in Social Sciences in Paris in 2011. In the period from 2007 to 2011, she participated in the scientific activities of the Groupe d'Anthropologie Historique de l'Occident Médiéval and the Groupe Image (EHESS). In 2011 he joined the Fluminense Federal University in Niteroi as a lecturer and in 2013 the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Università di Bologna. His scientific interests focus on the history of the body in the Middle Ages, rituals of violence in Medieval and Renaissance literature as well as in the History of Dance. She collaborates with the project Coreuthic Heterotopies, dance and performance in the visual and literary culture of the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (HAR2017-85625-P), directed by Dr. Licia Buttà. Standing out among her publications: Il fiero pasto, antropofagie medievali (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2015); Cannibals Histoire de l'anthropophagie au Moyen Âge (Parigi, Les Éditions Arkhê, 2018).

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Sara Sánchez Roig holds a BA in Art History (2016). She also holds a MA in Teacher Training (2017) and a BTECs in Projection and Direction of Decoration Works (2013). She is currently a doctoral student in the Humanities Studies program at the URV. She focuses her research activity on the multiple workshops in Catalonia in the second half of the 14th century, studying the patrons, workshops and liturgy of the chapels of Saint Mary and the Baptistery in the Cathedral of Tarragona, PhD supervisor: dr. Licia Buttà.

Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil

Sílvia Saladrigas Cheng has a degree in Art History (University of Barcelona/1998), a master in Medieval European Identity (University of Lleida/2017) and a postgraduate degree in Textile Design from the University School of Technical Industrial Engineering in Terrassa (1989). A weaver by vocation and a documentalist by training, she has studied the analysis of historical fabric ligaments in the International Center for the Study of Ancient Textiles (1991) and practical studies on pre-jacquard looms in the Danish Weaving Center (1990). Her main interest is the research in medieval textile techniques and more broadly the study of textiles understood as historical documents, mediums of culture, knowledge and as expression of a specific social mentality. She has given classes and conferences in several schools, congresses and conferences. She has been a member of the research project: "Las manufacturas textiles andalusies: caracterización y estudio interdisciplinar" (HAR2014-54918-P) and works in the Textile Museum of Terrassa as a documentalist since 1996. She is currently a PhD student at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with the project "Corpus of medieval textiles preserved in Catalonia (10th-14th centuries): technique, history, documentation and de-fragmentation".

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Voravit Roonthiva is an independent art conservator and researcher specializing in polychrome wooden artifacts based in Barcelona, Spain. He holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Rovira i Virgili University, specializing in choir stalls. His research interests focus on the materiality of medieval retables and choir stalls, particularly their structural and constructive and morphological configurations. He is responsible for conducting the technical study of the choir stalls in Barcelona Cathedral (2017-2018) as part of a forthcoming restoration project, and recently, he carried out the restoration of the 14th dorsal of Girona Cathedral. He is the co-writer of the books Moviment d’obres d’art: préstecs, manipulació, conservació i exhibició (2016), El retaule tabernacle de Santa Maria de l’Estrella de la catedral de Tortosa (2023), and Les pintures murals gòtiques de l’església de Santa Maria del Bruc i la seva restauració (2023).

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Associate Professor of Classical Philology.