Gian Franco Chiai (Ancient History and Classical Philology), worked extensively on a project about insularity and the literary representations of the island within the classical literature. He has published essays on the literary representations of Sardinia and Sicily and a study of the ancient names of those islands. In addition, he studied the representation of the island as a "mental model" in the framework of Greek and Roman culture. Currently, he is working on a monograph about the culture of Lemnos during archaic times. Starting from the archaeological evidence, he is reconstructing the relationships between mythical traditions and material culture of this island in the time before the conquest by Athens. In addition, Chiai researches the interaction of local people on the islands with Greek and Phoenician culture, and he is currently preparing an essay on the origin of the ancient Greek and Phoenician Names of Ischia.