Ronald G. Musto holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University and specializes in the Italian Trecento, with a focus on Rome and Naples. He has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia, NYU, and Duke universities. He has held Renaissance Society of America, American Academy in Rome, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mellon Foundation fellowships and published twelve books and various articles, including The Catholic Peace Tradition (National Catholic Book Award, 1986); Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age (AHA Marraro Prize, 2004); and Renaissance Society and Culture (ed., with John Monfasani).

He has worked in the book trade since 1967 and in 1985 with Dr. Eileen Gardiner he cofounded Italica Press, where he has developed numerous print and electronic projects. With Dr. Gardiner he has co-authored “The Electronic Book” in The Oxford Companion to the Book, and in The Book: A Global History. They are co-authors of The Digital Humanities: A Primer (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Ronald Musto is general editor of the six-volume Documentary History of Naples and author of Medieval Naples: A Documentary History, 400-1400 (2013). Among his articles are "Queen Sancia of Naples (1286–1345) and the Spiritual Franciscans" (Basil Blackwell, 1985); “Franciscan Joachimism at the Court of Naples, 1305–1345: A New Appraisal” (Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 1997);" "Angevin Manuscripts and the Visualization of Power in the Reign of Giovanna I of Naples" (Visual History, 2016); “Introduction: Naples in Myth and History,” in Marcia B. Hall and Thomas Willette, Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance: Naples (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); and several articles in the Dictionary of Art and Oxford Bibliographies Online for Rome, Naples, and Southern Italy. Dr. Musto's reviews of books on medieval and early modern Rome, Naples, and Southern Italy appear regularly in Renaissance Quarterly, The Medieval Review and other journals. His study of trecento historians of the Italian Mezzogiorno, entitled Writing Southern Italy before the Renaissance (Routledge, 2019), is now in its second, revised edition (Italica Press, 2022).

Dr. Musto's newest book, The Attack on Higher Education: The Dissolution of the American University (Cambridge University Press, 2021) has been listed among Forbes Magazine's 10 Best Books in Higher Education in 2022.

From 1999 to 2011 he served, with Eileen Gardiner, as co-Director of Humanities E-Book for the American Council of Learned Societies; and from September 2011 to April 2013, with Eileen Gardiner, as Executive Director/Editor of Speculum for the Medieval Academy of America. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and Research Fellow (Hon.) at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol, UK. He serves as a Member of the Executive Committee for the Centre and as Co-Editor of the University of Bristol, Studies in Medieval Cultures.

His latest article, “The British Library Meliadus de Leonnois: Additional MS 12228, Pisanello, and Alfonso I of Naples” has appeared in Manuscripta 67.2 (2023/ pub. 2024): 225–94.

His forthcoming work includes articles on the forma urbis of medieval Naples, on the chronicle of the Anonimo Romano, and on an article analyzing the Met Museum's Lehman Adoration of the Magi (Naples, 1340–44), with the working title: "The de'Cabanni of Naples: African Patrons of the Arts in the Trecento." His latest book, Naples in Rome: The Angevin Century, is now in progress.