Academy Members

Demo Šime

Academic titles:

• Doctor of Science

Institutions:

• Full professor –Faculty of Croatian Studies of the University of Zagreb

Membership in the Academy:

• associate member – Department of Philological Sciences (5/21/2026 – …)

---

Šime Demo was born in Rijeka in 1979. He completed his studies in Latin Language and Roman Literature and Greek Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb in 2002, and his postgraduate doctoral studies in linguistics at the same faculty in 2008, earning the academic title of Doctor of Philosophy in the scientific field of humanities, discipline of philology, branch of classical philology, with the thesis “Verbal Valency of in Croatian Grammars of Latin” / ”Valentnost glagolâ u hrvatskim gramatikama latinskoga” (supervisor: Prof. Ivo Pranjković; co-supervisor: Prof. Mate Križman).

From 2004 to 2010 he worked as a research assistant and subsequently senior research assistant at the Croatian Institute of History; from 2010 to 2018 he was employed as an assistant professor, from 2018 to 2023 as an associate professor, and from 2023 to the present as a full professor at Croatian Studies / the Faculty of Croatian Studies of the University of Zagreb, where he has taught more than twenty courses in Latin and Greek language, Croatian Latinity, and linguistics, in Croatian, English, and Latin. There he headed the Department of Croatian Latinity in the periods 2010–12, 2014–16, and 2017, and served as deputy head of the same Department in 2012–2014 and 2016–2017. He has supervised approximately fifteen successfully defended master’s and bachelor’s theses.

His research interests comprise Latin (especially Neo-Latin) linguistics, administrative Latin, Croatian Latinity, macaronic Latin literature, and Digital Humanities.

He has twice undertaken semester-long research stays abroad: in 2011–2012 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (project Linguistic aspects of Latin-Croatian macaronic poetry: Localising a global phenomenon, supported by the Nurus Foundation and the Croatian Science Foundation), and in 2017–2018 at the Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, Austria (project How artificial language mixing works: Linguistic structure of macaronic Latin, a research fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences within the Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities programme). In addition, he received training at the advanced Latin seminars Litterarum vis (Szeged and Budapest, 2008) and Monumenta viaeque (Rome, 2010), organised by the Accademia Vivarium novum, and at the summer school Aestiva Romae Latinitas (Rome, 2007), led by Reginald Foster, the leading Latinist of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See.

He is the principal investigator of the project Early Modern Latin Lapidary Inscriptions in the Churches of Southern Istria: Documentation, Analysis, Contextualisation / Ranonovovjekovni latinski kameni natpisi u crkvama južne Istre: Dokumentacija, analiza, kontekstualizacija (research project of the Croatian Science Foundation, 2023–2027), and has also led the projects Church and Latin in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina: Language, Genres, History / Crkva i latinski u Hrvatskoj i BiH: jezik, žanrovi, povijest (2015), Classicism and Anti-Classicism in Renaissance Latinity / Klasicizam i antiklasicizam u renesansnom latinitetu (2018), The Latinist Heritage in Comparative Perspective / Latinistička baština u komparativnoj perspektivi (2022), and The Latin Heritage in Comparative Perspective: Literary-Linguistic Continuity and Didactic Aspects / Latinistička baština u komparativnoj perspektivi: književnojezični kontinuitet i didaktički aspekt (2023), funded by research grants of the University of Zagreb.

He has been or is a collaborator on the projects Canonical Visitations of the Diocese of Senj and Modruš or Krbava / Kanonske vizitacije Senjske i Modruške ili Krbavske biskupije (current Ministry of Science, Education and Youth, 2004–2005), Perception of the Turks in Croatian Latin Historiography of the 16th and 17th Centuries / Percepcija Turaka u hrvatskoj latinističkoj historiografiji 16. i 17. st. (2005–2006), Civil Croatia in the Early Modern Period: Social, Cultural, and Political Relations / Civilna Hrvatska ranog novovjekovlja: Društveno-kulturno-politički odnosi (2007–2013), Bilingual Digital Greek-Croatian and Latin-Croatian Corpus / Dvojezični računalni grčko-hrvatski i latinsko-hrvatski korpus  (University of Zagreb, 2014), Textual Networks of Early Modern Croatia / Tekstualne mreže ranonovovjekovne Hrvatske (Croatian Science Foundation, 2014–2018), Croatian Written Heritage from the 17th to the 19th Century / Hrvatska pisana baština od 17. do 19. stoljeća (University of Rijeka, 2014–2018), Latinism as Patriotism / Latinizam kao patriotizam (science popularisation programme, Ministry of Science, Education and Youth, 2016–2017), Classicism and Anti-Classicism in Renaissance Latinity / Klasicizam i antiklasicizam u renesansnom latinitetu (University of Zagreb, 2016 and 2017), Croatian Renaissance Aristotelianism / Hrvatski renesansni aristotelizam (2018–2023), Qualities, Soul, and Mind in Aristotelian Philosophy / Kvalitete, duša i um u aristotelovskoj filozofiji (EU funds within the Recovery and Resilience Plan, 2024–2025), Early Modern Latin Heritage in the Cultural, Religious, and Political Sphere / Ranonovovjekovna latinistička baština u kulturnoj, vjerskoj i političkoj sferi (University of Zagreb, 2024), Europe’s Spiritual Heritage in the Croatian Latin Tradition: Sources and Outcomes / Duhovno nasljeđe Europe u hrvatskoj latinističkoj tradiciji: Izvori i ishodi (University of Zagreb, 2025), and Europe’s Spiritual Heritage in the Croatian Latin Tradition: Knowledge in the Digital Age / Duhovno nasljeđe Europe u hrvatskoj latinističkoj tradiciji: Znanje u digitalnom dobu (University of Zagreb, 2026). He is an external partner in the project Neo-Latin in the Modern World, in its segment Viva vox: Oral Neo-Latin (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung / Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, 2026–2033).

He has published six books (two co-authored, one with the prestigious Belgian publisher Brepols), around fifty articles (of which more than 20 appear in international, foreign, and equivalent domestic publications, notably with publishers Brill, Brepols, and De Gruyter and in journals such as Arctos, Humanistica Lovaniensia, and the International Journal of Bilingualism). He has also published approximately twenty reviews and shorter contributions, and approximately thirty translations from Latin and Ancient Greek.

He has presented papers at about sixty scholarly and professional conferences and workshops, half of which were held abroad (Aarhus, Aix-en-Provence, Albacete, Vienna, Boston, Chicago, Delphi, Frascati, Innsbruck, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Leipzig, Leuven, Lisbon, Manchester, Mostar, Munich, Münster, Prague, Rome, Salzburg, Santiago de Compostela, Tallinn, Tampere, and Tomislavgrad). Four of the foreign presentations were invited and one was a plenary (keynote). He has delivered approximately twenty public lectures, summer school presentations, and visiting lectures abroad, at universities in Belgrade (three times), Leuven, Manchester, and Olomouc, at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck (twice), and for the Associazione Internazionale per gli Studi Folenghiani “Amici di Merlin Coccai” (Bassano del Grappa).

He is a member of the Croatian Society of Classical Philologists, where he has been a member of the Executive Board since 2010 and president since 2023. Since 2010 he has been the Society’s delegate to the umbrella organisation Euroclassica, where since 2023 he has been vice-president, a member of the Executive Committee, and editor of the official publication Euroclassica Newsletter; he has also coordinated in Croatia the testing for the European Certificate for Classical Languages on behalf of Euroclassica every year since 2012.

Since 2011 he has been a member of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, where since 2022 he has been a part of the Executive Committee and chair of the Committee for Digital Resources.

He is also a member of the professional associations Amici linguae Latinae (Austria), Associazione Internazionale per gli Studi Folenghiani “Amici di Merlin Cocai” (Italy), the Croatian Philological Society, the Croatian National Committee for Historical Sciences, and the Renaissance Society of America (USA).

He is a member of the State Commission for Competitions in Classical Languages (since 2013), the Expert Commission for the Assessment of Textbooks and Supplementary Teaching Materials for Primary and Secondary Schools for the subject of Latin Language (since 2013), and the Scientific Council of the Institute for Antiquity and Classical Heritage (Belgrade, since 2024); he was a deputy member of the Council of the Social Sciences and Humanities Area of the University of Zagreb (2021–2025). He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Systasis (Skopje, since 2010) and Lucida intervalla (Belgrade, since 2024), and was a member of the editorial board of the journal Kroatologija (Zagreb, 2009–2018), for which he edited a thematic issue on Croatian Latinists in 2016.

He organised a workshop on the linguistic features and editing of Neo-Latin philosophical texts (Zagreb, 2021), a research workshop on the Semantic MediaWiki system and the construction of an epigraphic database (Zagreb, 2024), and two student workshops on early modern epigraphy in Istria (Zagreb, 2025; Split, 2026); he co-organised the Second Croatian Studies Conference / Druga kroatološka konferencija (Zagreb, 2011), the Scholarly Conference on Juraj Rattkay / Znanstveni skup o Jurju Rattkayu (Zagreb – Veliki Tabor, 2016), the XXX Euroclassica Conference (Split and Mostar, 2021), the conference Digital Neo-Latin Studies: Ideas and Perspectives (Aarhus, 2025), and the conference Euroclassica Academia Ragusina (Dubrovnik, 2026). He was a member of the Programme Committee of the international conference On the Soul (Skopje, 2016).

He has reported on projects funded by the University of Zagreb development fund and the University of Zagreb research grants, and has reviewed approximately ten books and over thirty articles.

He has received the Faculty of Croatian Studies Award for Work of High International Visibility on multiple occasions (2014, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2024). He is the recipient of the Award of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts for the Highest Scientific and Artistic Achievements in the Republic of Croatia for 2023 in the field of philological sciences, and of the Annual State Award for Science for 2023 (for the book Latin Macaronic Literature: An Introduction / Uvod u latinsku makaronsku književnost). In 2026 he was elected an associated member of the Department of Philological Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.