Dalia Pratali Maffei holds a Bachelor (2016) and Master degree (2018) in Classics, both obtained at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, supervised by Pr. Olga Tribulato. She also holds a diploma from Ca' Foscari International College in Global Asian Studies. During her Master, she spent one year at UCL (University College London) as Erasmus+ student, and then she moved to the UK for her PhD, at the University of Cambridge (2029 - 2023). During her PhD, she was a visiting researcher at HiSoMa, Lyon (March 2022) and a DAAD researcher at the University of Würzburg (April - July 2022).
Dalia's research interests include dialectology, contact- and historical sociolinguistics, metalinguistics, and epigraphy. She currently works on Ancient Greek Linguistics, specifically on Greek dialects, their variation and mixture in time, space, and different contexts. Her PhD project, supervised by Pr. James Clackson and Pr. Richard Hunter, investigated how literary and spoken varieties interact in inscribed poetry (Thesis title: The Dialect of Hellenistic Inscribed Epigrams from Doric-Speaking Areas). Her posdoctoral project is titled 'Sociolinguistic variation in Ancient Greek dialects: mapping the contact between Doric and Koine' (generously funded by FWO, supervised by Pr. Klaas Bentein). Her research will focus on dialectal contact and change in the Hellenistic age, to understand what linguistic and contextual factors can explain the disappearance of Ancient Greek dialects, and to assess the importance of these factors in the history of the Greek language.
