Elected in 2018 to the chair Law, Culture and Society in Ancient Rome, Dario Mantovani is a legal historian. Born in 1961 in Milan (Italy), after classical studies he obtained a PhD in law at the University of Pavia (1985), to which he returned in 1997 as professor of Roman law, after the universities of Trento and Parma.
Director of the journal Athenaeum. Studi di Letteratura e Storia dell'Antichità and member of the scientific committees of several European journals, he has been vice-president of the International Society of Classical Bibliography since 2020. He is Chairman of the Scientific Council of the École française de Rome (2020-2023 term).
He has chaired the Centro per la Storia dell'Università di Pavia since 2007, and edited the collective work Almum Studium Papiense in six volumes.
He has founded and directed the Cedant (Centro studi e ricerche sui diritti antichi) since 2003. Thirteen editions of the " Collège des droits de l'Antiquité ", lasting one month each, have brought together nearly two hundred European and international students, and have resulted in a collection of thirteen volumes.
In 2014, he was awarded a Cátedra d'excelencia (Banco Santander) at Madrid's Universidad Carlos III. Recipient of a senior scholar fellowship from the University of California Berkeley (2007), he has been a visiting professor at EPHE, EHESS, Paris-I and Paris-II, as well as Collège de France. He was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for the Redhis project (2014-2020).
A member of the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere since 2009, he has been a foreign correspondent of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres since 2016, from which he received the Plottel prize.