Maddalena Signorini graduated in Latin Palaeography at the University of Rome «La Sapienza» (1985); she got her PhD in Greek and Latin Palaeography (University of Rome «La Sapienza», 1994); she specialized as ‘Manuscript Bookkeeper’ at the Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari of the Università di Roma «La Sapienza» (1994); she was Post-Doctoral Fellow at La Sapienza (1995-1996); Ricercatrice (Assistant Professor) of Latin Palaeography at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (2000-2006); and she is currently Associate Professor at Tor Vergata (2006-).
She lectured at the School of the State Archive of Parma (1998-2003) and at the School of Biblioteconomy of the Vatican Library (2010/2011); she was Director of the Mellon Summer Institute in Italian Paleography at The Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles 2007, 2009, 2014, 2017) and at the Newberry Library (Chicago, 2011, 2016).
She is a member of the Board of the PhD programme in Greek and Latin Palaeography at the University of Rome «La Sapienza»; she has been a member of the Italian Association of Palaeographers and Diplomatists since 1995; she is member of the Roman Philological Society (since 2006) and sits on the editorial board of Studj Romanzi.
She is currently working with the Center for Renaissance Studies (The Newberry Library) at the creation of an Italian Paleographic Website funded by the Mellon Foundation.
Her main research interests lie in Medieval literacy, the first documents of writing in Romance vernaculars, and, more broadly, on the production, the dissemination, the tradition and the preservation of texts in the vernacular. She has published widely on Petrarch and his writings, on his library and – in more recent years – also on Boccaccio’s.
At the moment she is almost finishing a work focused on Petrarch’s notes on his own books fly-leaves that received the Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Award.