Mia Trentin

Mia Gaia Trentin is an Affiliate Research Scientist at The Cyprus Institute-STARC-APAC Labs. She is educated with an interdisciplinary curriculum, including Archaeology (BA), Cultural Heritage Studies (MA) and Social History (PhD), which reflects her interests and her research approach. In September 2017, she joined The Cyprus Institute - STARC with a post-doc position in collaboration with NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Application) - the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, enriching her knowledge in Digital Humanities. 

She investigates the Medieval and Early Modern written culture in all aspects, from traditional historical study and sources’ editing to epigraphy. Her expertise is in informal written communication – graffiti – focusing on writing to recover past people’s practices, attitudes and approaches to their surrounding natural and anthropic space.  Her research focuses on Medieval and Modern graffiti along the Eastern Mediterranean sea routes (GRAFMEDIA, Graffiti Mediterranean Dialogue, OPPORTUNITY/0916/MSCA/0010), performing a holistic approach to the graphic culture and the Medieval and Modern mobility in the Eastern Mediterranean, providing new and original data concerning cultural exchanges, informal writing practices, people’s interaction with their anthropic and natural landscape. At the same time, she is working on the methodological aspects of graffiti studies, developing specific digital tools for the documentation and visualization of graffiti and their material and immaterial aspects while establishing a methodology of analysis based on ontological description and standards (DIGIGRAF – Digitizing Graffiti, EXCELLENCE/0421/0540). She is also engaged in EU project consortia aiming to promote Cypriot Cultural Heritage and graffiti within the academic community and in the field of education and valorization through community involvement and citizen science.