Ilia Calogero Curto Pelle

Ilia Calogero Curto Pelle is a first-year Ph.D. student in the History Department, interested in economic networks and exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean between the 5th and 10th centuries.

Ilia’s proposed Ph.D. project, entitled “Merchant Identity in the Eastern Mediterranean between the 5th and 10th Centuries”, proposes to explore the evolution of the definition, self-identification, and self-presentation of merchants from the Balkans, Anatolia, Near East, and North Africa from the Late Roman Empire to the High Middle Ages. It investigates the transformation of merchants from guild-based groups of artisans to independent agents in the contested political framework of the Early Middle Ages, with the culmination of this process becoming manifest in the creation of the merchant republics of Italy, whose main purpose and self-definition was rooted in the production of profits through international commerce.

Except for his primary research topic, Ilia has a vast array of interests including monetary continuity and change between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, IR and historical-sociological approaches to the study of pre-modern imperial orders, the emergence and transformations of Slavic identity on the Byzantine cultural periphery, Sassanian history and economy, and Japanese history. He is also fascinated by languages, both living and dead, and is looking to add more to his current count of 13 (next on the bucket list are Hebrew, Syriac, and Coptic for the dead ones and Turkish, Japanese, and Modern Greek for the living tongues).

He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in Classics. His senior thesis, entitled “The Transformation of Balkan Identity in the Long Seventh Century”, was awarded with prizes for best senior thesis from the Hellenic Studies and Classics departments. He pursued an M.Phil. in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at the University of Oxford, graduating in the summer of 2024 with a distinction for his master’s thesis on the “Circulation of Byzantine Imitative Coinages in the 12th and 13th Centuries.” He was further awarded the Summer Fellowship in Byzantine Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection for the summer term of 2024.

Outside of the classroom, Ilia acts as assistant coordinator to the FLAME Project at Princeton, sings in the Princeton University Glee Club, and catalogs coins for the Princeton University Numismatic Collection. He is also an alumnus of Mathey College, former president of the Princeton University Classics Club, and an alumni member of the Princeton Charter Club.