Léon Robin Centre for the Study of Ancient Thought

Scalas Giulia

Details: Last Updated on Thursday, 02 October 2025 15:01

Scalas Giulia Scalas, born in Rome in 1989, has been a research fellow since October 2024 at the CNRS, within the Centre de recherches sur la pensée antique – Léon Robin (UMR 8061).

After studying philosophy at the Università di Roma – Sapienza, she defended her PhD in 2019 at the University of Lille. She has worked as a temporary lecturer and researcher at the Université Paris Nanterre and at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lille, before holding postdoctoral positions within the “Medicine and Philosophy” program at the Léon Robin Centre as well as in the IUF project Galenus Verbatim (UMR Orient & Méditerranée – Sorbonne Université).

Her research focuses mainly on atomist doctrines, and particularly on Epicurean philosophy. She is the author of a monograph, La théorie épicurienne du vivant, based on her dissertation, published in 2023 by Classiques Garnier (Les Anciens et les Modernes – Études de Philosophie), which examines the Epicurean conception of living beings in dialogue with certain philosophers and physicians (Democritus and Leucippus, the Hippocratic doctors, Aristotle and Theophrastus).

Alongside this work, she has conducted critical and textual studies on several complex testimonies traditionally regarded — notably according to Usener — as constituting the Epicurean corpus. The analysis of Lucretius’ work has played a central role in this context. She has also explored the ways in which Epicureanism continued to shape the thought of modern philosophers (Locke, Kant) and even contemporary ones (J. Bennet).

At present, she devotes special attention to Epicurus’ vast and fragmentary treatise On Nature (Peri Physeos), known mainly through papyrological sources still being uncovered, focusing on its elaboration and its transmission within the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic Kepos. In connection with her research on the concept of “mechanism” as related to Epicurean physiology, she is working in particular on the revision of the edition of Book XIV of the Peri Physeos, together with its French translation and commentary. She is also part of a working group dedicated to the translation and commentary of Book XXVIII of the Peri Physeos.