Vas Shenoy, Presidente 

Vas Shenoy is an Italo-Indian businessman, resident in Italy. During the last 22 years of his career, he has worked for the management of companies and projects in the field of technology, renewable energy and cooperation and development in more than twenty countries in Europe, Middle-east, Africa and Asia 

Vas is the President of Glocal Cities ONLUSthat works in the field of decentralised cooperation. Glocal Cities empowers mayors, the Glocal champions, to assist each other and find innovative solutions in a world that is increasingly urban. Glocal Cities also works with communities in conflict/post conflict assisting them in the provision of emergency assistance.

Vas is an alumnus of the St. Dominic Savio High School in Mumbai, the United World College of the Adriatic, Duino, Italy and has studied Philosophy and History at the University of Mumbai. He is currently also pursuing a degree in Sanskrit at the University of Naples “l’Orientale”. He is a member of the Italian Association of Sanskrit Studies. 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS 

Francesco Sferra 

A student of Raniero Gnoli, Corrado Pensa and Raffaele Torella, Francesco Sferra (b. 1965) is Full Professor of Sanskrit language and literature at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” since 1998 

Member of several scientific societies, including the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (Pune, since 1995), the Société Asiatique (Paris, since 1996) and the Pali Text Society (Oxford, since 2003), Sferra is part of the Academic Board of the Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici (Rome), the Journal of Tantric Studies (Hamburg) and the Journal of the Japanese Association for Indian and Buddhist Studies (Tokyo). Teacher of Sanskrit in Naples since 1998-99, in 2007 and in 2011-2012 he was visiting professor (Numata- Professor für Buddhismuskunde) at the Asien-Afrika-Institut (University of Hamburg). Since 2006 he has directed an international research project for the critical edition and study of unpublished Buddhist works in Sanskrit. The first results of the research appeared in 2008 in vol. 1 of the series “Manuscripta Buddhica” with the title Sanskrit Texts from Giuseppe Tucci’s Collection. Part I (Rome). 

Translator from Sanskrit and Pāli for the series “Meridiani” of the publishing house A. Mondadori Editore (Milan 2001, 2004), he was the editor for the same series of one volume on ancient Hinduism (2010). 

Author of essays on linguistic speculations of some Hindu religious-philosophical schools (1991,1994, 2007 and 2010), his research focuses also on Indian tantric traditions, including Kashmir Shaivism, the Viṣṇuite tradition of Pāñcarātra, the Buddhist Kālacakra Pañcarātra, la scuola buddhista del Kālacakraand Indian classical epistemology. 

Anna Filigenzi 

Anna Filigenzi is associate professor in Indian archaeology and art history at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. She is the director of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Afghanistan since 2004, and a member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan since 1984. Her research, publications and teaching are mostly related to the art history and archaeology of the North-west of the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, with special focus on Gandharan and post-Gandharan periods; Buddhist iconography and architecture; Relationship between religious culture, politics and civil society; Cultural relationship between Northern Pakistan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Western Himalaya, and Xinjiang, particularly with regard to the development and circulation of visual art forms. 

She has been carrying out several research projects, both individually and as part of a team, in Italy and abroad, and she is the author of numerous publications. 

Stefania Cavaliere 

Stefania Cavaliere is Assistant Professor in Hindi Language and Literature at the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies, University of Naples “L’Orientale”. After her PhD in Indological Studies at the University of Turin, she got a postdoctoral fellowship founded by the University of Milan for a project carried out in collaboration with the “Jawaharlal Nehru University”, New Delhi. In 2015 she was Fulbright Visiting Scholar for the Summer and Fall semester 2015 at the Department of Middle East and South Asian Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University, New York 

Her main fields of research are classical Hindi court poetry, Indian aesthetics and the role of Hindi Literature in the reconstruction of Early Modern Indian Intellectual History. Among her publications there are the volumes Moonlight of the Emperor Jahangir’s glory. Critical Edition and English Translation of the Jahāṁgīra Jasa Candrikā by Keśavadāsa (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, 2010), la curatela del volume Gurumālā. Papers in honour of Shyam Manohar Pandey, edited by Stefania Cavaliere (Annali 68/2008, Napoli, 2012) e various articles of which “Religious Syncretism and Literary Innovation. New Perspectives on Bhakti and Rasas in the Vijñanagita by Keshavdas”, in Tyler Williams, Anshu Malhotra, John Stratton Hawley (eds.) Texts and Traditions in Early Modern North India (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2018, pp.174-195) e “The voices of Krishna Sobti in the polyphonic canon of Indian literature”. In: Ciocca Rossella, Srivastava Neelam. Indian Literature and the World: Multi-lingualism, Translation, and the Public Sphere (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017, pp. 153-73). 

Florinda De Simini 

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). 

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. 

From 2018 she is the principle researcher of the ERC project “Translocal Identities. The Śivadharma and the Making of Regional Religious Traditions in Premodern South Asia” (SHIVADHARMA at l’Università “L’Orientale”, Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo department. 

From 2019 May 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”.