Professional profile
Historian | Hebrew Bible | Ancient Judaism | Phoenician and Punic Culture | History and Archaeology of Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant | Ancient Religion(s)
Graduated in Biblical Sciences from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 2011. In 2016, he obtained a PhD in History from the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, with a dissertation devoted to the identity construction of ancient Israel in biblical and extra-biblical sources, as well as in the historiographical tradition. He was a fixed-term researcher at CNR ISPC from January 2023 to January 2026 and has been a permanent researcher since May 2026. His research interests range from the history of religions in the Levant between the Iron Age and the Achaemenid period to the historical-critical study of the Hebrew Bible and the archaeology and epigraphy of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. He focuses in particular on religious and cultural interactions on a regional scale, including the Phoenician, Aramaic, Philistine, and Transjordanian worlds, integrating material culture, iconography, and texts.
After taking part in several archaeological missions in Lebanon between 2012 and 2023, at Kharayeb, Jemjim, and the National Archaeological Museum of Beirut, since 2024 he has directed the MAECI-CNR archaeological mission “Makmish Archaeological Project” in Israel. He is also co-director, with Eran Arie (University of Haifa), of the project “The Phoenician Sanctuary at Makmish: The Nahman Avigad Excavations at Tel Michal (1958–1961)”, funded by the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications at Harvard University. From 2023 to 2025, he was principal investigator of the project TRIBAL – “Trespassing Religions, Identities and Borders in the Ancient Levant”, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research under the PNRR programme. In 2025, together with Naama Yahalom-Mack (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), he was awarded the Vigevani Prize for scientific cooperation between Italy and Israel for the project “Visual Entanglements: Tracing the Crescent-Bull Motif across the First Millennium BCE”.
For the three-year period 2025–2027, he is principal investigator, together with Anna Cannavò (CNRS) and Christian Frevel (University of Bochum), of the Trilateral Conference “Religious Dynamics in the Ancient Levant (12th–4th Century BCE): A Regional Approach”, funded by Villa Vigoni, DFG, and FMSH.
Between 2017 and 2022, he participated as a postdoctoral researcher in two international projects: the ERC Advanced Grant “Mapping Ancient Polytheisms” at the University of Toulouse, directed by Corinne Bonnet; and the SNSF Sinergia project “Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant” at the University of Zurich, directed by Christoph Uehlinger. As a member of scientific boards, he is currently involved in “OMICRON – Obsolescent. Managing Divine Inefficiency, Coping with Ritual Oblivion and Negligence”, directed by Valentino Gasparini (Carlos III University of Madrid), and in the IUF project “Sources juives de l’histoire grecque”, directed by Michaël Girardin (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale). He has held research stays at several foreign institutions, including Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the University of Tübingen, the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, and Bar-Ilan University.
From 2013 to 2021, he was adjunct professor at the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, where he taught courses in Ancient History and History of Religions. He obtained the Italian National Scientific Habilitation as Associate Professor for sector 10/N1 for the period 2023–2034. Since 2021, he has been elected Secretary of the European Association of Biblical Studies, after serving as an elected member of its executive committee from 2018.
He was a member of the scientific editorial board of Rivista di Studi Fenici from 2012 to 2025 and of the editorial board of the series Transformations and Crises in the Mediterranean, published by CNR Edizioni, from 2022; in 2025 he became its co-director. Since 2021, he has served as Field Editor for Hebrew Bible for AABNER – Advances in Ancient, Biblical, and Near Eastern Research, and since 2026 he has been a member of the editorial series CAPP n.s. (Corpus of Phoenician and Punic Antiquities, new series), within the CAPP project, no. 44 of the Union Académique Internationale. He has participated as speaker and invited speaker in around thirty international conferences in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Finland, Cyprus, Israel, and Japan.
CNR Disciplinary Fields and Research Management Sectors
- SH6_8 – Ancient history, medieval history
- SH5_4 – Philology; text and image studies
- SH8_2 – Religious studies, ritual; symbolic representation
MUR Italian Scientific-Disciplinary Sector
- 10/N1 Cultures of the Ancient Near East, the Middle East, and Africa
- STAA-01/F Phoenician-Punic Archaeology
Groups & Labs CNR ISPC
Phoenician and Punic Research Group →
Ancient Near East Research Group →
Publications
Highlight
F. Porzia (2024). Beyond Ethnicity: Outline of a Renewed Approach to the Levantine Divine Landscape”, Die Welt des Orients 54: 58–78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666560972.58
F. Porzia (2022). “Nomina nuda tenemus?” The Notion of “Name” in Ancient Levant and the Hebrew Bible”, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 11(3): 197–214. DOI: 10.1628/hebai-2022-0030
F. Porzia (2022). Le peuple aux trois noms. Une histoire de l’ancien Israël à travers le prisme de ses ethnonymes. ORBIS BIBLICUS ET ORIENTALIS, vol. 298, Leuven : Peeters (406 pp.). ISBN: 978-90-429-5073-3. Open access
