Alessandro Del Tomba is Ricercatore Tenure Track (Assistant Professor) in Historical Linguistics. His research focuses on the languages and cultures of Central Asia during the first millennium CE, with particular expertise in Tocharian A and B, Eastern Iranian languages (notably Khotanese, Tumshuqese, and Bactrian), and Middle Indo-Aryan varieties. He employs a multidisciplinary approach to these languages, including the comparative method for Indo-European, Iranian, and Indo-Iranian reconstruction, structural analysis in both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, the study of contact linguistics and historical sociolinguistics, with particular emphasis on philological, palaeographic, and textual aspects. He is the editor of a volume (Reichert Verlag) and the author of a monograph (Brill) and many articles published in top peer-reviewed international journals and conference proceedings. He has presented papers at conferences and workshops in Italy (Rome, Pavia, Pisa, Salerno, Viterbo) and abroad (Vienna, Berlin, Leiden, Saint-Pierre d'Oléron, Erlangen, Cologne, St. Petersburg, Kyoto, Hachioji, Beijing) and has been visiting scholar at the University of Leiden (2019-2020), and at Soka University in Hachioji (2024). He is Principal Investigator of the FIS project "Khotanese Language and Texts in Context (KhoTxt): A multimodal approach to the classification and periodisation of the Khotanese language and its texts within the cultural and historical framework of medieval Central Asia".
Academic functions and training
2024-present Assistant Professor of Historical Linguistics, Sapienza Università di Roma
2021-2024 Research Fellow (Ricercatore a tempo determinato di tipo A), Sapienza Università di Roma
2021-present Managing Editor of Ricerche Linguistiche
2020-2021 Postdoctoral researcher (Assegnista di ricerca), Sapienza Università di Roma
2019 Visiting researcher, Universiteit Leiden
2018-2020 Academic tutor and examiner, Università di Roma Guglielmo Marconi
2018-2019 University Assistant (prae-doc), Istituto Italiano di Studi Orientali
2016-2020 Full-time PhD researcher, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden
2016-2019 Full-time PhD researcher, Linguistics, Sapienza Università di Roma
2015 Master's degree, Linguistics, Sapienza Università di Roma
2013 Bachelor's degree, Humanities (Linguistics), Sapienza Università di Roma
Selected conference presentations, invited talks, and seminars
09/2025 "The origin of Late Khotanese metrics”. Beyond the Mountains. Ancient Languages in and around the Tarim Basin, Peking University, Beijing, September 20–21, 2025.
08/2025 “Introduction to the historical grammar of Khotanese”. Summer School of Indo-European languages: Middle Indic and Middle Iranian, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, August 24–29, 2025. Four-lesson class: Cultural introduction, palaeography and orthography, historical phonology and morphology.
04/2025 “Khotanese allography and the origin of rr within the framework of Central Asian Brāhmī". LSS 6. Sprachwissenschaftliche und kulturelle Aspekte von Schriftsystemen / Linguistic and cultural aspects of script systems, Centre CNRS de la Vieille Perrotine, Saint-Pierre d’Oléron, April 28–29, 2025 (invited).
01/2025 “From Khotanese to Sanskrit and back: Towards a reedition and linguistic analysis of the Jīvakapustaka” [with Silvia Luzzietti]. Tenth International Conference on Iranian Linguistics (ICIL 10), University of Tuscia, January 13–15, 2025.
10/2024 “Buddhist elements in the Khotanese Rāmāyaṇa”, lecture at Soka University of Japan (invited).
10/2024 “On the relationship between the manuscripts of the Khotanese Siddhasāra: Linguistic and historical data”, Kyoto Symposium of Silk Road Studies — from India to China via Turfan – Kyoto University, October 4–7, 2024 (invited).
09/2024 “Palaeographic and phonetic remarks on rr and r in Khotanese”. Language and culture in the borderlands of the Eastern Silk Road, Wien Universität – Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, September 3–6, 2024.
06/2022 “Allomorphic variation in Khotanese nominal morphology. The Indo-Iranian background of the nominative-accusative plural of the a-declension”. Indogermanist Kolloquium. Universität zu Köln, May 27, 2022 (invited).
12/2021 “Remarks on the historical nominal morphology of Khotanese. The origin of the kīra-type and related issue”. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics Seminars, Leiden University, December 17, 2021 (invited).
10/2019 “Morpho-phonological problems in Tocharian: the case of final PIE -ur”. Wien Universität, Recent Advances in Tocharian Philology and Linguistics, October 25–27, 2019 (invited).
Memberships, cooperations, and other academic qualifications
2025-present Co-opted member of the Sodalizio Glottologico Milanese.
2024-present Member of the Scientific Board for the linguistic section of the book series SIGNA – Linguaggio, storia e civiltà nel mondo antico, EDI Press UniMarconi.
2024-present Elected member of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum (CII), Cambridge, UK.
2023-2034 Italian National Academic Qualification (ASN) for the position of Associate Professor in Historical and General Linguistics (10/G1).
2023-present Co-opted member of the Societas Iranologica Europaea (SIE).
2022-present Co-opted member of the Società Italiana di Glottologia (SIG).