Florinda De Simini is associate professor (2019) in Ancient and Medieval History of India at the Dipartimento Asia, Africa Mediterraneo of the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. After getting a PhD in Indic and Tibetan Studies from the University of Turin (2013), she has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Leiden International Institute for Asian Studies (2013), at the University of Hamburg (2013-14), and a “Petra-Kappert-Fellow” at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (SFB 950) at the University of Hamburg (2015-16). From 2014 until 2017 she has been responsible for the research project “Political Power and Religious Groups in Early Medieval India: A study of epigraphic materials and unpublished manuscripts concerning the Śaiva traditions (6th to 12th century)”, financed by and carried out at the University “L’Orientale”. From 2017 to 2019 she has been research fellow at the same institution.
Her scholarly interests encompass the history of Śaivism through written sources, South Asian epigraphy in Sanskrit and Kannada, as well as the cultural aspects of the production and transmission of handwritten documents in South Asia. Besides this, she has also studied Sanskrit normative literature (Dharmaśāstra) and the reception of South Asian religions in the West. Concerning the study of the Śivadharma corpus, she has dealt with the codicological and philological aspects that characterize the tradition of the Śivadharma, producing the first scholarly contributions solely dedicated to the topic; she has moreover worked on the Nepalese corpus, trying to place it within the historical context of medieval Nepal, and connect its emergence with the religious and political landscape of the Kathmandu Valley.
In the framework of the Śivadharma Project, she will work on the Sanskrit texts of the Śivadharmottara and its spread and impact on various forms of Śaivism throughout South Asia, as well as focus on Śaiva inscriptions from the Deccan.
She is also scientific coordinator for the University “L’Orientale” within the ERC Synergy Project DHARMA, “The Domestication of Hindu Asceticism and the Religious Making of South and South-East Asia”.
For a list of her publications, see:
https://unior.academia.edu/FlorindaDeSimini
