dr. sc. Ovanes Akopyan / životopis

Ovanes Akopyan (PhD, University of Warwick, 2018) is the author of Debating the Stars in the Italian Renaissance: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem and Its Reception (Brill, 2021) and the editor or co-editor of five collections of essays. He is currently working on two book-length projects: one on disaster narratives in early modern thought (for Johns Hopkins University Press) and another on images of Russia in European Renaissance writing and Russian responses (for Harvard University Press). He has also recently been commissioned to write a new biography of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola for Reaktion Books’s Renaissance Lives series.
He has held research fellowships at the Warburg Institute (University of London), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies). His work has been supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellowship, among others. Since the 2025–2026 academic year, he has been a permanent Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, and a Visiting Professor at Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul.

Work Experience
Primary Employment:
From April 2026. Research Fellow (equivalent of tenure-track assistant professor), Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb.

From October 2026. Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow, Technische Universität Darmstadt.
From September 2025. Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul.
2023–2025. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
2022–2023. Andrew W Mellon Fellow, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
May–June 2022. Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
February–May 2020. E. H. Gombrich Fellow, Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
2017–2022. Research Fellow, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, European Research Council’s Advanced Grant ‘NOSCEMUS: Nova Scientia: Early Modern Science and Latin’ (PI Prof. Martin Korenjak, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck/Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies).

Education
2013–2018. PhD in Renaissance Studies, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick.
2010–2014. Candidate of Sciences in History, Department of Medieval and Early Modern History, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
2005–2010. Specialist (BA+MA) degree in History, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Teaching Experience
2026. Intellectual History: Methods and Perspectives course, Ibn Haldun University (graduate students; convenor).
2026. Monarchism, Absolutism, and Enlightenment in Early Modern Europe, 1648–1789 course, Ibn Haldun University (undergraduate students; convenor).
2025. present Co-supervisor of Andrew Debono Cauchi’s PhD thesis ‘Classical Reception in Pico della Mirandola’s De Ente et Uno and His Responses to Cittadini di Faenza’s Objections’ (University of Malta, Department of Classics, Faculty of Arts).
2025. From the “Enchanted World” to the Rise of Modern Science: A European Perspective course, Ibn Haldun University (graduate students; convenor).
2025. Renaissance and Reformation: Shaping Modern Europe course, Ibn Haldun University (undergraduate students; convenor).
2025. History of Early Modern Meteorology course, Ca’ Foscari University Venice (graduate students: tutor).
2023. Member of PhD committee of Aleksandra Mamlina’s thesis on The Visual Culture of the Visconti in the Late Fourteenth and mid-Fifteenth Centuries (Department of History, Higher School Economics, Moscow).
2023. Historical Epistemology course, Ca’ Foscari University Venice (undergraduate students; tutor).
2022. Examiner of Anastasia Afanasyeva’s MA thesis on The Legitimization of Florence’s Expansion in Leonardo Bruni’s Historiae Florentini Populi (Departme nt of History, Higher School Economics, Saint Petersburg).
2020–2021. Reception of the Classical Tradition in Early Modern Literature module, University of Innsbruck (graduate students; tutor).
2019. External supervisor of Sergei Abramov’s BA thesis on The Plato-Aristotle Controversy among Byzantine Intellectuals in Fifteenth-century Italy and its Place in the Philosophy of the Renaissance (Department of History, Higher School Economics, Saint Petersburg).
2018. External supervisor of Anna Gasparian’s BA thesis on Everyday Practices in Armenia in the eleventh – fourteenth centuries: Private Life, Property Rights, and Women’s Status (Department of History, Higher School Economics, Saint Petersburg).
2016, 2019–2020. History of Science courses, School of Molecular and Theoretical Biology, Barcelona (high-school students and first-year undergraduate students; convenor).
2015–2016. Medieval and Renaissance Magic Reading Group, University of Warwick (graduate and postgraduate students; convenor).
2015–2016. Medieval Philosophy Reading Group, University of Warwick (graduate and postgraduate students; convenor).
2014. Magic and Marvels in Renaissance Italy module, University of Warwick (graduate students; tutor).
2013. Renaissance History lecture course, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of History (second-year undergraduate students; lecturer and tutor).
2012–2013. Medieval and Early Modern History seminar, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of History (second-year undergraduate students; tutor).

Grants and Awards
2026–2028. Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.
2023–2025. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.
2022–2023 .Andrew W Mellon Fellowship, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
2022. Seal of Excellence of the European Commission (EU).
2021–2022. Major Research Grant, Russian Science Foundation (collaborator).
2017. Callum McDonald Memorial Bursary, University of Warwick.
2016–2017. Standard Research Grant, Russian Foundation for Research in the Humanities (collaborator).
2016. Travel Grant, Renaissance Society of America.
2013–2017. Chancellor’s International Full Scholarship, University of Warwick (tuition fees and stipend).
February–March 2012.  Research bursary, German Historical Institute in Moscow.
March–April 2012. Research bursary, Moscow Centre of Russian and French Studies (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), Paris.
March–April 2012. Russian Government Full Scholarship for Studies under the Candidate of Sciences Program, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University (tuition fees and stipend).
October 2009–March 2010. Erasmus Mundus (IAMONET-RU) Exchange Program, University of Udine, Italy.
February–May 2009. Intern, University of Florence, Department of Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
2005–2010. Russian Government Full Scholarship for Studies at the Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University (tuition fees and stipend).

Conference Organization
2027. (together with Michael Kwakkelstein) ‘The Rhetoric of Science in the Age of Leonardo,’ the Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut (NIKI), Florence.
2023. ‘Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World,’ member of the organisational committee (Prague).
2023. (together with Marcello Garzaniti and Francesca Romoli) ‘Rinascimento e renovatio nella Russia del Cinquecento. Prove di dialogo e relazioni culturali con l’Occidente,’ Università degli Studi di Firenze and Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento.
2019. ‘(De)Constructing Authority in Early Modern Cosmology,’ Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, joint event of the NOSCEMUS ERC project (Innsbruck), the Ptolemaeus Arabus and Latinus project (Munich), and the Early Modern Cosmology ERC project (Venice).
2016. ‘Fate and Fortune in Renaissance Thought,’ University of Warwick. Supported by grants from the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, the Humanities Research Fund and the Research Student Skills Programme, University of Warwick, and a grant from the Society for Renaissance Studies.
2014. ‘Astrology and Anti-Astrology in the Renaissance: Between Philosophy, Religion and Science,’ University of Warwick. Supported by a grant from the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick.

2023. (together with Michelle Pfeffer and Neil Tarrant) Organiser of two panels at the annual ‘Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World’ conference, Prague: ‘Astrology and Religion: Opposition, Censorship, Adaptation.’
2023. (together with Mattia Mantovani) Organiser of two panels at the annual ‘Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World’ conference, Prague: ‘The Senses and the Sciences: New Perspectives on Early Modern Aristotelianism.’
2019. (together with David Rosenthal) Organiser of two panels at the Renaissance Society of America annual meeting, Toronto: ‘Natural Disasters and Environmental Interventions in the Early Modern World I: Humanism, Memory, the Divine‘ and ‘Natural Disasters and Environmental Interventions in the Early Modern World II: Floods, Water, and Work.’
2018. Organiser of a panel at the Renaissance Society of America annual meeting, New Orleans: ‘Francesco Patrizi da Cherso: New Approaches.’
2017. Organiser of a panel at the annual ‘Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World’ conference, Padua: ‘Geography, Humanism, and Astrology: Perceiving Renaissance Thought in Fifteenth–Seventeenth-Century Russia.’
2017. Organiser of two panels at the Renaissance Society of America annual meeting, Chicago: ‘Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Reconsidered,’ ‘Pico’s Oration: Not on the Dignity of Man.’