Research
Dr Ferrario’s main interests include the history of alchemy and of medieval sciences, the transmission and reception of Greek knowledge in the Islamic world and the philology of medieval Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts.
He has been a fellow at the Warburg Institute (London; 2007) and at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (Philadelphia, PA; 2008). He also worked as a field researcher for the Schoenberg Database of Medieval Manuscripts and collaborated with the Library of Congress' World Digital Library project. At the Genizah Research Unit he works mainly on the description of Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew fragments, with a particular interest in alchemical, scientific and magical material. He is currently developing a system of tags for allowing the navigation of digitised images of Genizah fragments on University Of Cambridge Digital Library.
Publications
- 'The Jews and Alchemy: notes for a problematic approach”, in M. López Pérez, D. Kahn, M. Rey Bueno (eds.), Chymia. Science and Nature in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010), pp. 19-30
- ‘Understanding the Language of Alchemy: The Medieval Arabic Alchemical Lexicon in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Ms Sprenger 1908’, in Digital Proceedings of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age, vol. I (2009): Iss. 1, Article 2
- ‘Origins and Transmission of the Liber de aluminibus et salibus’, in L. Principe (ed.), Chymists and Chymistry. Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chymistry (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2007), pp. 137–148.
