CONFERENCES & INVITED SPEAKER

Conferences & Congresses:

2026 ‘Australasian Society for Classical Studies Conference’, 2-5 February 2026 (Auckland, New Zealand): New advancements in Roman numismatics: the study of the ‘Calvatone Hoard 2018’ in context (Cremona – Italy) (03/02/26).

2025 ‘Social Science & Humanities Research Association International Conference’, 02-03 December 2025, Hotel Capital Conference Centre (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia): Cultural heritage at risk in Sicily: military interference at the Castle of Brucoli (Syracuse, 1941-42) (02/12/25).

2025 ‘Annual Meeting for Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World (AMPRAW)’, 21-23 November 2025, University of Malta (Valletta, Malta): Antiquarianism and the Classical Heritage: A new concept in Modern Age Sicily (22/11/25).

2025 ‘Faculty Forum’, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University (Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia): Replacing money? The role of tokens in the Classical Mediterranean world (16/04/25).

2025 ‘15th European Social Science History Conference’ (ESSHC), Leiden University, 26-29 March 2025 (Leiden, Netherlands): Too far away from Peru and Mexico? The small coin hoard of Mazzarrà Sant’Andrea (Messina, Sicily, 1950) and the Philip V’s gold 8 escudos in context (1714-46) (28/03/25).

2025 ‘Australasian Society for Classical Studies Conference’, 2-5 February 2025 (Canberra, Australia): Emergency contexts, antiquities and World War 2: new data on the archaeological collections of the National Museum of Palermo (1940-43) (03/02/25).

2024 ‘XVI Giornate Gregoriane: «Pulcherrima et plurima spolia: collezionismo e collezionisti in Sicilia tra ‘700 e ‘800»’, 13-14 December 2024 (Palermo, Italy): Antonino Salinas e il Museo Nazionale di Palermo: le collezioni numismatiche tra strategie intelligenti ed acquisti mirati (14/12/24).

2024 ‘Mediterranean Studies Association 26th Annual Conference’, 28-31 May 2024 (Valencia, Spain): Sicily in the Modern Age: antiquarians and archaeologists shaping a new cultural heritage (16th-17th centuries) (29/05/24).

2024 ‘The Material Heritage of Ancient Greece in Early Modern Europe: New Approaches and Perspectives’, International Workshop, 01-02 February 2024, Norwegian Institute in Athens (Athens, Greece): Greek heritage in Modern Age Sicily: the role of antiquarians in context (01/02/24).

2023 ‘Faculty Forum’, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University (Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia): Protecting antiquities in time of conflict: Sicily as a case study (Italy, 1940-45) (06/11/23).

2023 ‘European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting’, 30 August-02 September 2023 (Belfast, Northern Ireland): Sicily, sites and World War 2: the impact of military activities on the island’s antiquities (02/09/23).

2023 ‘World History Association Conference 2023: Energies’, 22-24 June 2023 (Pittsburgh, PA, USA): Sicily at war (1940-43): lack of fuel and energy supply in cultural heritage shelters (23/06/23).

2023 ‘CIRICE, 10th International Conference: City and War’, 8-10 June 2023 (Naples, Italy): War in Sicily: protecting archaeological sites to contain military interference (1940-43) (08/06/23).

2023 ‘The sources of the engravers: magical gems in a history of image transfers’, International Symposium, 15-17 February 2023, Université de Fribourg (Fribourg, Switzerland): Magical gems in Sicily: some case studies between iconography and collections (15/02/23).

2022 ‘Annual Meeting for Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World (AMPRAW)’, 03-05 November 2022, Yale University (New Haven, CT, USA): Sicily in the nineteenth century: shaping the reception of an island through its museums (05/11/22).

2022 ‘XVI International Numismatic Congress’, 11-16 September 2022 (Warsaw, Poland): Modern coins under threat: an Italian prisoner prosecuted by the Allied Government in Sicily (1943) (12/09/22).

2021 ‘World History Association Conference 2021: Health, Globally’, 5-9 July 2021 (Salt Lake City, UT, USA) (virtual): Sicily and World War 2: preserving antiquities, museums and sites in danger (1940–45) (06/07/21).

2021 ‘Mediterranean Studies Association 23rd Annual Conference’, 26-29 May 2021 (Gibraltar, UK) (virtual): Protecting antiquities in a State of War: Sicily and World War II (28/05/21).

2020 ‘European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting’, 26-30 August 2020 (Budapest, Hungary) (virtual): Networks connecting archaeologists and authorities in Sicily (1940-45): Pietro Griffo and Jole Bovio Marconi during World War 2 (27/08/20).

2020 ‘Classical Association of the Mid-West States (CAMWS) Annual Meeting’, 26-30 May 2020 (Birmingham, Alabama, USA) (virtual): Protecting antiquities in danger: Sicily and World War 2 (1940-45) (30/05/20).

2019 ‘Tokens: The Athenian Legacy to the Modern World’, 16-17 December 2019 (Athens, Greece): New Hellenistic and Roman clay tokens from Sicily through local identities, museum and archival research (17/12/19).

2019 ‘XXV AISCOM Meeting’, 13-15 March 2019 (Reggio Calabria, Italy): Il mosaico con i pilei dei Dioscuri (insula IV, Tindari, Messina): nuove prospettive di ricerca dai ‘tokens’ (13/03/19).

2018 ‘XXII Symposium on Mediterranean’, 22-25 November 2018 (Santa Severa, Italy): Mobility of gods, iconographies and micro-economies: the role of ancient tokens in the inner and coastal Sicily during the Hellenistic and Roman period (23/11/18).

2018 ‘XIII TAG der Antiken Numismatik’, 02-03 November 2018 (Münster, Germany): An ongoing project: tokens, local cults and economics in Hellenistic and Roman Sicily (03/11/18).

2018 ‘World History Association Conference’, 21-23 June 2018 (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA): Not ‘banal’ material culture: ancient tokens, daily life and religion in Hellenistic and Roman Sicily (22/06/18).

2018 ‘AIAC/ICCA XIX Congress’, 22-26 May 2018 (Cologne/Bonn, Germany): Religion, micro-economies and divinities reproduction on small tesserae in Roman Sicily (26/05/18).

2018 ‘AIA/SCS Meeting’, 4-7 January 2018 (Boston, MA, US): The sacred twins even on tokens: the role of Dioskuroi at the ancient Tyndaris (Messina – Sicily) (07/01/18).

2017 ‘Tokens: Culture, Connections, Communities’, University of Warwick, 8-10 June 2017 (Coventry, UK): A terracotta token in context: a fortunate and recorded discovery from the necropolis of Tindari (Messina, 1896) (09/06/17).

2017 ‘Association of the Ancient Historians Annual Meeting’, Brown University, 04-07 May 2017 (Providence, Rhode Island, USA): To be or not to be a coin? Ancient tokens in Italy as an economic source and the representation of local communities (05/05/17).

2017 ‘Classical Association Conference’, University of Kent, 26-29 April 2017 (Canterbury, UK): Shaping a national and regional identity in Sicily through Classical Archaeology: the island’s cultural heritage between the Bourbon and the Kingdom of Italy (1816-1918) (28/04/17).

2017 ‘60th Missouri History Valley Conference’, Magnolia Hotel, 02-04 March 2017 (Omaha, NE, USA): New photographs from the past: revealing excavations and social contexts in Sicily between nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (03/03/17).

2016 ‘Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS) Fall Meeting’, The Heldrich Conference Center, 20-22 October 2016 (New Brunswick, NJ, USA): Being on Cori’s trail at ‘Ratae Corieltavorum’: Latin/Archaeology clubs and outreach activity at Leicester local K-12 schools (United Kingdom) (22/10/16).

2016 'Darmstädter Diskussionen 8. Interdisziplinäres Doktorandenkolloquium zu antiken Kulturen’, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 21-24 September 2016 (Darmstadt, Germany): Forgotten abuses of power in the history of Sicilian archaeology: the government authorities punishing collectors before Italian Unification (1816-1860) (22/09/16).

2016 ‘9th Celtic Conference in Classics’, University College Dublin, 22-25 June 2016 (Dublin, Ireland): The impact of Augustus’ propaganda in Sicily through numismatic, epigraphic and historical evidence (24/06/16).

2016 ‘III International Numismatic Conference «Pecunia Omnes Vincit»: Coin as a medium of exchange throughout centuries’, Jagiellonian University, 20-21 May 2016 (Cracow, Poland): Hoarding trends and monetary circulation in northern Roman Italy: the case study of the ‘Calvatone hoard’ (Cremona, 1942) (20/05/16).

2016 ‘Museums in the Global Contemporary: Debating the Museum of Now. 50th Anniversary Conference’, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, 20-22 April 2016 (Leicester, UK): From Salinas (a director) to “Salinas” (a museum): The ongoing evolution of the Museum of Palermo in the Italian context (1861–2015) (22/04/16).

2015 ‘School of Archaeology and Ancient History Research One-Day Conference 2015/16’, University of Leicester (Leicester, UK): Building railways and finding coins: the new ‘Cerda Hoard’ (1869) in post-Unification Sicily (13/11/15). 2015 ‘The State and Its Past: Consolidating National Identities Through History, Archaeology, and Politics’ International Conference, Franke Institute, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL, USA): Antonino Salinas’ Archaeology in Sicily: Regional Identity VS National Identity (10/10/15).

2015 ‘XV International Numismatic Congress’, 21-25 September 2015 (Taormina, Italy): Collecting coins and connecting collectors: government and social networks in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1816-1860) (24/09/15). 2015 AIA/SCS 146th Meeting, 8-11 January 2015 (New Orleans, LA, US): Above the law? Local priests and local archaeology in Sicily under the Kingdom of Italy (1861-1915) (11/01/15).

2014 ‘East Midlands Universities Postgraduate Conference 2014’, University of Leicester (Leicester, UK): Treasure hunters or poor sharecroppers? Farmers acting in northern Sicily after the Unification (1861-1918) (18/09/14).

2014 ‘10th European Social Science History Conference’ (ESSHC), University of Vienna, 23-26 April 2014 (Vienna, Austria): Politicians, custodians and workers: a complex ‘archaeological’ society in late nineteenth-century Sicily (25/04/14).

2014 AIA/APA 145th Meeting, 2-5 January 2014 (Chicago, IL, US): Politics and archaeology in post-Unification Sicily (1861–1915): new perspectives from records (03/01/14).

2013 ‘Classical Association Conference’, University of Reading, 03-06 April 2013 (Reading, UK): Acquiring finds and increasing the collections of the Royal Museum of Palermo: new records on Post-unification archaeology in Sicily (1861-1915) (04/04/13).

2012 ‘Induction Week 2012’, University of Leicester (Leicester, UK): Archaeology in northern Sicily during the post-Unification period (1861-1915): a historical reconstruction based on a study of the sites of Tindari, Lipari and Tusa (03/10/12).

2012 'East Midlands Universities Postgraduate Conference 2012’, University of Nottingham (Nottingham, UK): From Lipari to Glasgow: charting the origins and export of the Scolarici-Stevenson collection and its place in history of late nineteenth-century Sicilian archaeology (05/07/12).

2009 ‘XIV International Numismatic Congress’, 31 August-3 September 2009 (Glasgow, UK): Heroic cults in Northern Sicily between numismatics and archaeology (02/09/09).​​

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Talks as Invited Speaker:

2025 ‘IRES International Conference’, 03 May 2025 (Dubai, Emirates): A disputed painting in Cefalù (Sicily, Italy): the Portrait of An Unknown Man by Antonello da Messina and its missed renovation (1942) (03/05/25) (key-note speaker).

2025 University of Antwerp, Department of Heritage Studies (Antwerp, Belgium): CODENAME SICILYWAR. From dusty records to a research project on Sicilian antiquities at risk (1940-45) (24/03/25).

2021 Accordia Research Institute, ‘The Italy Lectures’ (London, UK): World War II in Sicily: protecting archaeology and museums under threat (15/03/21).

2020 NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies (Amsterdam, Netherlands): Archaeology and museums at risk: impacting World War 2 in Sicily (10/03/20).

2019 ‘The small stuff of the Palmyrenes: the coins and tesserae of Palmyra’, 20-21 June 2019 (Copenhagen, Denmark): An unexpected find from the sand: a new tessera from the south-west quarter of Palmyra (2010) (21/06/19).

2018 Universität Tübingen, Institut für Klassische Archäologie, ‘Forschungskolloquium’ (Tübingen, Germany): Small monetiform objects in Roman Sicily: tokens and local cults (31/10/18).

2018 Casa Italia Chicago, Italian Cultural Center (Chicago, IL, USA): A token for your thoughts: the lost and rediscovered world of token use in ancient Sicily (27/06/18).

2018 Warwick Numismatic Day 2018, University of Warwick (Coventry, UK): Railways, authorities, museums and Modern coins: the ‘Cerda Hoard’ in context (Palermo, 1869) (17/05/18).

2017 ‘5th Assemani Symposium on Arabic Coinage’, Università La Sapienza, Rome, 29-30 September 2017 (Rome, Italy): Why should the state keep Arabic coins? Assessing two case studies on nineteenth century Sicily (29/09/17).

2017 Centro Culturale Numismatico Milanese (Milan, Italy): Gettoni antichi dalla Sicilia: un progetto di ricerca nel Regno Unito (20/06/17).

2017 Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland): The newly-found world of tokens: an overview of Hellenistic and Roman Sicily (31/05/17).

2017 Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali e Ambientali (Milan, Italy): Token Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean. Un’esperienza di ricerca nel Regno Unito, tra archeologia e numismatica (03/04/17).

2017 San Diego State University, Department of History (sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America) (San Diego, CA, USA): Ancient tokens and communities: insights into Hellenistic and Roman Sicily (06/03/17).

2015 Summer Research Seminars, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester (Leicester, UK): Archaeology and social contexts: some case studies during post-Unification Sicily (1861-1918) (17/06/15).

2013 Warwick Numismatic Day 2013, ‘An Island view I. International Numismatic Workshop’, University of Warwick (Coventry, UK): Collections and Reception in 19th century Sicily (04/07/13).

2013 Archaeology Seminars, University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, UK): Tracking records and discovering unknown excavations: archaeology in the province of Messina during the post-Unification period (Sicily – Italy, 1861-1915 (07/03/13).

2012 Lunchtime Seminar Series, Centre for Historical Archaeology, University of Leicester (Leicester, UK): Disclosing a newfound world of antiquarian collectors in northern Sicily through records (1816-1861) (19/11/12).

2009 Centro Culturale Numismatico Milanese (Milan, Italy): Ricerche locali d’antiquaria e numismatica nella Sicilia del ‘700: Gabriele Lancillotto Castelli ad Halaesa Archonidea (13/10/09).

2007 Centro Culturale Numismatico Milanese (Milan, Italy): Il culto dei Dioscuri a Tyndaris tra numismatica e archeologia (06/03/07).​​​