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Marco Albertoni works on the relationship between the sentence to infamy of memory and crimen laesae maiestatis in the theological and juridical tradition of Christianity between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age. On this topic he published the book Storia delle colonne infami, giustizia e memoria in età moderna (2023), and one article on these same sentences by inquisitorial courts (2024).

Cecilia Cristellon (PhD in History 2005, European University Institute, Florence, Italy), after substituting for the Chair of Early Modern Studies at the University of Frankfurt in summer 2024, she will become a Fellow at the Kathe Hamburger Kolleg „Legal Unity and Pluralism" at the University of Münster from 1 October 2024. Her research focuses on interreligious contacts and conflicts (including mixed marriages and rites of
passage) in the Roman congregations during the early modern era, analysing ecclesiastical courts and the polycentric administration of religious difference.

Níels Páll Eggerz is one of the two principal investigators of the DFG-founded project Kabbalah as a Paradigm of Transfer between Judaism and Christianity, which is hosted at the Department of History at the Goethe University Frankfurt. His research interests include Jewish-Christian intellectual exchange and cross-pollination in early modern Europe, Jewish messianism, conversion narratives, Christian Hebraism, and Christian Kabbalah. He is an affiliated researcher of the POLY Research Group, investigating the dynamics between Judaism and (Protestant) Christianity generated by the early modern Christian interested in Jewish mysticism, commonly known as Christian Kabbalah.

Dr. Maria Teresa Fattori is a researcher at the University of Teramo in the project Netex – Networks and exchanges within the Congregations of the Roman Curia. Her current work focuses on the relationship between the Catholic Church and slavery in the early modern period. She has published extensively on the history of the early modern Roman curia, the development of canon law after the Council of Trent, and the history of global Catholicism.

Since December 2020, I am Full Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Teramo (Italy). From January 2023, I am a research fellow at the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid (Spain), as part of the Una4Career 2021 - Marie Sklodowska-Curie Cofund program. My research project is entitled “ChurchMove - Churchmen on the move: the routes of religious orders between Italy and Spain and beyond as instruments of political, cultural and religious exchange, and integration among the elites (1560-1700)”. Alongside this project, I am researching non-white Catholic clergymen (of Amerindian, African and mixed descent) on a global scale between the 16th and 18th centuries (see my articles: “Il problema dell’esclusione dei non bianchi dal sacerdozio e dagli ordini religiosi nei cattolicesimi dell’età moderna (XVI-XVII secolo),” Cristianesimo nella storia, 41, 2021, pp. 751-792, and “Scandale sous les tropiques. Ordination sacerdotale et identité raciale entre Caracas, Rome et Madrid à la fin du XVIIe siècle,” Rives Mediterranéennes, forthcoming). I also serve as an advisor to the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame (USA) and as the scientific director of the Sangalli Institute for History and Religious Cultures (Florence).My research interests include the history of papal finances of religious orders in the early modern age. Notable works include the monographs L'oro e la tiara. La costruzione dello spazio fiscale italiano della Santa Sede (1560-1620) (il Mulino, 2003), I Domenicani (Il Mulino, 2016, with translations in Ukrainian); and the co-edited volume Papacy, religious orders, and international politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries (Viella, 2013).

Ute Lotz-Heumann is the Heiko A. Oberman Professor of Late Medieval and Reformation History at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. She specialises in early modern Irish and German history and the history of the European Reformations and Enlightenment. Ute Lotz-Heumann is currently the director of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona, and the North American Managing Co-Editor of the Archive for Reformation History.

From December 2023 to August 2024, Ute Lotz-Heumann is a Guest Affiliated Researcher at the POLY Research Group.

Dr Cesare Santus works on confessional dynamics within the Eastern Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire (with a focus on the Armenians) and the role of the Roman Inquisition with respect to the doctrinal problems posed by Catholic missions in the East. He is the author of Trasgressioni necessarie. Communicatio in sacris, coesistenza e conflitti tra le comunità cristiane orientali (2019) and various articles on Eastern Christians and the Muslim presence in Italy.

Sita Steckel (Dr. phil. 2006, Munich) is Professor for Medieval History at the History Department at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research mainly concerns the history of learning and the history of religion between c. 800 and 1400, with a focus on Latin Christianity and western Europe. Recent publications and projects focus on the inner diversity of Latin Christianity, particularly concepts and perceptions of diversity within the vita religiosa and interplay between clerics, religious orders, and heretical movements. She also works on religious polemics and conflict dynamics.

Xenia von Tippelskirch (PhD 2003, European University Institute, Florence, Italy; habilitation 2019, Humboldt University Berlin) is Professor at the History Department at Goethe University Frankfurt and Director of the IFRA (SHS) / Institut français Frankfurt. Her interests are the history of bodies in religious dissent in early modern Europe, the history of mystical movements and spiritual childhood in early modern France and Germany, and the history of knowledge transfer accross denominational and political borders. In the context of POLY, she contributes to the decentralization of religious history focussing on dissenting movements.

Riccardo Bonafè’s research is about the retracing of the bolognese print censorship during the Restoration Age (currently, in the PhD thesis, between 1815 and 1829) and, at the same time, the vatican print censorship led by the Index and Holy Office Congregations. Another important field of research is the study of the relationships between both the bolognese authorities (mainly the archbishop, the cardinal Legate and the police force) and the bolognese and vatican authorities in matters of print control in the Papal State.

Besides, during his three months of stay at the Goethe Universitat, he had the opportunity to present some case studies of his PhD project on two occasions.

Ivan Almes (PhD 2018), associate professor at the Department of History, director of the Ihor Skochylias Center for Religious Culture, and academic coordinator of the Kyivan Christianity Research Program at the Ukrainian Catholic University. He did internships at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder), Institute of the Eastern Churches of Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (Germany), and Institute of Sangalli (Florence, Italy). He researches the history of reading, monasticism, and the religious history of early modern Ukraine and has authored more than 40 scholarly papers. His last book is From Prayer to Education: History of Monks’ Reading in the Lviv Eparchy of the 17th and 18th Centuries” (Lviv, 2021). He is a member of the Historical Commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Ukrainian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Oksana Prokopyuk (PhD in History 2007, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine) is a Leading Research Fellow, Department of History and Archeology, National Preserve Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in Kyiv, Ukraine. She publishes widely on Church history, religious studies, social history, religious culture, history of empires of Eastern Europe, and eighteenth-century studies. Within the frame of the POLY Research Group, she examines ‘communication through donations’ in the religious culture of the Kyiv Orthodox Metropolitanate in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Vitalii Tkachuk (PhD 2018, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine) is the Deputy Director of the Spiritual Treasures of Ukraine City Museum in Kyiv. Vitalii’s research interests focus on Eastern Europe and include the early modern visual and material culture of Eastern Christians, cults of saints, and the religious life of Greek merchants in the Hetmanate. Currently, Vitalii is researching the transmission of Northern and Western European religious prints in Kyiv, tracing their transcultural movement and thus demonstrating their place in the early modern global art network.

Valerii Zema (PhD, 2004) is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Medieval and Early Modern History at the Institute of History of Ukraine. As a member of the POLY Research Group, his work focuses on religious controversies in the context of the Kyivan Metropolitanate and its interactions with the Western Christian world. He is currently completing his book Ukraine and Europe at the Crossroads of the Past: Ideas, Spaces, and Centres. Historical Essays, which examines key aspects of political, religious, and cultural life in the Ukrainian lands from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period.