Giulia Tonon
A Sociolinguistic approach to the Ptolemaic priestly decrees and the reconstruction of past identities.
Biography
Giulia was awarded a BA and MA in History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East from the University of Venice, and an MA in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool. With a strong interdisciplinary background, she combines her interests in heritage, material culture, and ancient languages to inform her academic and practical work. Giulia has taken part in archaeological excavations in Italy, the UK, and Egypt, and has gained valuable curatorial experience through her work in museums. She serves as an editor for the New Classicists online journal and as co-founder and co-editor of the University of Liverpool’s ACE & Creativity departmental blog.
Research interests
Giulia’s research explores the phenomena of diglossia and societal bilingualism in Ptolemaic Egypt by focusing on the Ptolemaic priestly decrees of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. Her project aims at investigating the trilingual nature of these texts – written in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek – bringing out their distinctness in expression, message, contextualisation, and audience. She is particularly interested in how language use reflects broader societal shifts and cultural negotiations. Her wider research interests include palaeography, epigraphy, ancient translation practices, and diachronic approaches to linguistic variation. By integrating sociolinguistics with textual criticism, her work sheds light on how written language mediated identity, power, and cultural integration in antiquity.