Dr. Bernardo Ballesteros Petrella

Biography

Bernardo Ballesteros Petrella is a Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He holds a BA and MPhil from Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. His academic background includes training in Classical Philology, specializing in languages such as Akkadian and Sumerian, and he has previously held postdoctoral positions at LMU Munich and the Warburg Institute, London. Since returning to Oxford in 2020, he has focused his research on the relationships between early Greek and Near Eastern poetry, especially in the context of epic narrative texts. His doctoral thesis, which he is currently converting into a monograph, investigates representations of gods in Sumero-Akkadian narratives and their connections to Greek epic poetry, including works by Homer and Hesiod. Bernardo is also interested in the impact of orality and writing on poetic technique and audience expectations in archaic Greece and Babylonia, and he actively contributes to the research cluster Early Text Cultures, where he has chaired activities between 2021 and 2022.

Research Interests