My research focuses on illuminated manuscripts as a key to medieval culture, which in manuscripts is revealed in the text-image relationship and in the stylistic and iconographic analysis of miniatures. I have been particularly interested in the genesis and development of illuminated illustrations of the Divine Comedy in the Po Valley in the 14th and 15th centuries, a subject to which I have devoted two monographs (("Frammenti dell’Aldilà. Miniature trecentesche della Divina Commedia", 2015; D. Guernelli-C. Ponchia, "La Divina Commedia ms. 9 della Biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile di Padova", 2018) and other studies (such as "Le fonti illustrative delle miniature del Dante Egerton", 2015; "La vita nascosta delle immagini. L’influenza dell’antico sulle prime illustrazioni della Divina Commedia", 2016). I have also taken part in major cataloguing projects of illuminated manuscripts resulting in valuable exhibitions and catalogues, such as"La bellezza nei libri. Cultura e devozione nei manoscritti miniati della Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova", exhibition catalogue edited by C. Ponchia (2017) and "Le miniature della Fondazione Giorgio Cini", edited by M. Medica-F. Toniolo(2016), to which I contributed with 13 catalogue entries.
Thanks to my participation in the European project CULTURA (2011-2014) I extended my research to the area of Digital Humanities, dealing in particular with the use of digital resources to support art-historical research ("Dante. A web-application for the History of Art", 2014) and user studies ("Engaging the User: Elaboration and Execution of Trials with a Database of Illuminated Images", 2013; M. AGOSTI-N. IRON-N. ORIO-C. PONCHIA, "CULTURA Outcomes for Improving the User's Engagement with Cultural Heritage Collections," 2014).