CURRICULUM VITAE – SHORT VERSION
(FOR ALL DETAILS see attached CV in pdf format)
1. Academic qualifications and profile
Since 1 March 2015 I have been Associate Professor of English Literature, SSD L-LIN/10, at the University of Parma, first at the Department of Classics, Languages, Education and Philosophy, A.L.E.F., and subsequently at the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, DUSIC.
On 5 May 2020 I obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification for the role of Full Professor in competition sector 10/L1 – English and Anglo-American Languages, Literatures and Cultures, now 10/ANGL-01.
From 2007 to 2015 I was Researcher in English Literature, L-LIN/10, at the University of Parma. From 2004 to 2007 I taught as Adjunct Lecturer in English Language and Translation, L-LIN/12, at the same university.
Before joining the University of Parma, I carried out teaching and research activities at the University of Bologna, where I held temporary teaching appointments, a postdoctoral fellowship and a research fellowship at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.
I obtained a PhD in Scottish Literature from the University of Glasgow in 1998, with a thesis entitled Scottish Eccentrics: The Tradition of Otherness in Scottish Poetry from James Hogg to Hugh MacDiarmid. I graduated in Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Bologna in 1993, with a final mark of 110/110, cum laude.
2. Fellowships, scholarships and awards
In 2025 I received an Honourable Mention for the 2024 Jack Medal from the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures, IASSL, for the article “Scottish Literature of Migration and Transculturality: Subversive Reticence and Gender Negotiations in Lady Anne Barnard’s Cape Writings”.
In 2022 I was appointed Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature.
I have been awarded international fellowships and research grants by institutions including the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, where I held a Nominated Fellowship in 2022 and a Visiting Research Fellowship in 2004; the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, where I held a Michael J. Connell Foundation and Mayers Fellowship in 2005; and Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, where I held an OIP Fellowship in 2002.
3. Research activity
My main research areas are British Romanticism, Scottish literature, literary translation, reception and transculturality.
More specifically, my work focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry and theatre, Romantic and contemporary drama, women’s playwriting, women’s writing, Scottish literature, literature of migration and exile, Anglo-Italian literary and cultural relations, the reception and rewriting of the classics, Byron studies, ecocriticism, geocriticism, and the relationship between literature, the environment and representations of the non-human.
My research draws on a range of critical approaches, including gender studies, feminist criticism and theory, postcolonial studies, translation studies, studies of transculturality, ecocriticism and geocriticism.
4. Main publications
I have published monographs, edited volumes and journal issues, critical editions, book chapters and articles in national and international journals.
Monographs
Eccentric Scotland: Three Victorian Poets. James Thomson (“B. V.”), John Davidson and James Young Geddes, Bologna, CLUEB, 2004.
Teorie target-oriented della traduzione poetica: trans-creazione e riscrittura dell’alterità, Lugo, Associazione Culturale “Il bradipo”, 2004.
Lord Byron and Discourses of Otherness: Scotland, Italy, and Femininity, The Roan, Kilkerran, Scotland, Zeticula-Humming Earth, 2012.
Nation, Community, Self: Female Voices in Scottish Theatre from the Seventies to the Present, Milan, Mimesis International, 2018.
I am also preparing a monograph entitled Migration and Transculturality in Scottish Literature 1770–1830 and a SCOTNOTES volume on Ann Marie di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood.
Edited volumes, journal issues and critical editions
My edited volumes and journal issues include Emancipation, Liberation, and Freedom: Romantic Drama and Theatre in Britain (1760–1830), Monte Università Parma, 2010; Remediating Imagination: Literature and Culture in Britain from the Renaissance to the Postcolonial, co-edited with Diego Saglia and Giovanna Buonanno, Carocci, 2016; East/West Encounters in Literature and Culture, co-edited with Lilla Maria Crisafulli, La questione Romantica, 2019; Travel, Migration, Exile, co-edited with Michael Bradshaw, La questione Romantica, 2023; Discorsi e linguaggi ecologici: per un approccio inter e transdisciplinare, co-edited with Alba Pessini, La Torre di Babele, 2024; and Scotland’s Branches: Language, Literature and Culture across Time, co-edited with Marina Dossena, Scottish Literary Review, 2025.
I also edited the critical edition Tre racconti di un esule in Inghilterra: i Blackgown Papers di Antonio Gallenga, Monte Università Parma, 2021.
Recent articles and book chapters
Recent publications include:
“Voicing Reticence, Resistance and Resilience in The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave Related by Herself (1831)”, Le Simplegadi, 2022.
“‘Nature never disappoints’: Conversations between the Human and the Other-than-Human in Lady Morgan’s Italy”, Textus, 2022.
With Diego Saglia, “Italy and British Romanticism: Human-Nonhuman Conversations”, Studies in Romanticism, 2023.
“Border Aesthetics, Resistance and Europeanness in David Greig’s ‘Anti-Brexit’ Theatre”, Anglistik, 2023.
“Scottish Literature of Migration and Transculturality: Subversive Reticence and Gender Negotiations in Lady Anne Barnard’s Cape Writings”, La questione Romantica, 2023.
“British Women Playwrights, Censorship and Self-censorship in the Long Eighteenth Century”, in The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.
“Urban Gothic and Anthropocenic Darkness in James Thomson (‘B.V.’)’s ‘The City of Dreadful Night’”, in Victorian Darknesses: Body, Mind, and Place, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026.
With Marina Dossena, “Scotland’s Branches: Language, Literature and Culture across Time. Editorial”, Scottish Literary Review, 2025.
“The Future of the Past: Revisionism, Theatricality, and National Identity in Three Scottish Plays from the 1970s to 2010”, Scottish Literary Review, 2025.
“Reading Pride and Prejudice in Tehran: Jane Austen, Azar Nafisi, and Women’s Agency”, Studium, 2025.
5. Research projects
I have participated in numerous national and international research projects, including COFIN, PRIN, University of Parma research projects and internationally funded projects.
Among the national projects in which I have participated are PRIN 2002 English Romantic Theatre (1760–1830): Texts, Theories and Stage Practices; PRIN 2006 An Italian in London; PRIN 2008 British Risorgimento: British Representations of and Interactions with the Process of Italian National Unification; and PRIN 2022 Reviving The Liberal: Literature and Politics between Britain and Italy, 1821–23.
I have been Principal Investigator of University of Parma research projects, including Reprising Romanticism: Romantic Re-Creations in Contemporary British Theatre (1980–2020), January 2022-January 2024, and Asylum Pieces: The Relationship between Individuals and Psychiatric Institutions in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction (1940–2020), October 2024-September 2025.
International projects include Second Cities in the Circuits of Empire: Calcutta, Glasgow, and the Nineteenth-Century Legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment, funded by the British Academy; International Knowledge Transfer Networks: Britain and Italy, 1785–1825; and two Italian-German cooperation projects in the Humanities and Social Sciences funded by the Italian-German Centre for European Excellence, Villa Vigoni.
In 2024 I organized and coordinated the international Summer School Ecological Transformations: Ethics and Praxis in Environmental Humanities, within the University of Parma W.I.D.E. programme, in collaboration with Bath Spa University and the GALA network, Global Academy of Liberal Arts.
In 2026 I am co-organizing and co-coordinating, with Simona Bertolini, an Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme, BIP, in collaboration with the Universities of Angers, Extremadura and Évora within the University of Parma’s EU GREEN network. The programme is entitled Reimagining the Human–Nonhuman Relationship: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities and Arts.
6. Conferences, seminars and scholarly activities
I have presented papers and invited lectures at numerous conferences, seminars and study days in Italy and abroad, at universities and institutions including the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, University of Southampton, University of Manchester, University of Cardiff, University of Nottingham, Bath Spa University, University of Vechta, University of Göttingen, University of Stirling, Villa Vigoni, IASH – University of Edinburgh, IAUPE, ESSE, BARS, IASSL and AIA.
I have also organized, co-organized or coordinated national and international conferences, seminars, panels and summer schools for, among others, ESSE, BARS, IASSL, AIA, the Interuniversity Centre for the Study of Romanticism and the GALA network.
7. Teaching activity
My teaching activity at the University of Parma mainly concerns English Literature and Anglophone Literatures.
Since 2015 I have taught in the BA degree programme in Modern Foreign Languages and Civilizations and in the inter-university MA degree programme in Languages, Cultures and Communication, jointly offered with the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
The courses I have taught have addressed, among other topics, gender and English literature, representations of otherness, Romanticism and the contemporary, migration literatures, borders and transculturality, Anglophone literatures and ecocriticism, human/non-human relations, and ideas and narratives of the nation from Shakespeare to Brexit.
In the academic years 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 I taught courses on Relationships between the Human and Non-human in Anglophone Literatures from the 18th Century to Today, Representations/Aspects of Otherness from the Early Modern Period to the Twentieth Century, and Ideas and Narratives of the Nation: from Shakespeare to Brexit.
I have also taught within Erasmus and international mobility programmes at the University of Gloucestershire, the University of Reading, the University of Manchester and Universität Vechta.
8. Doctoral teaching and supervision
From A.Y. 2013–2014 to A.Y. 2024–2025 I was a member of the Teaching Board of the PhD programme in Philological-Literary, Historical-Philosophical and Artistic Sciences at the University of Parma.
From A.Y. 2025–2026 I have been a member of the Teaching Board of the PhD programme in Historical and Textual Sciences at the University of Parma.
Within doctoral programmes, I have taught lectures, seminars and workshops on topics including borders, écriture féminine, the translation of academic texts, British experimental literature, the Romantic-period British press, The Liberal, Romantic-period periodicals and contemporary ecopoetics.
I have supervised and co-supervised PhD theses on Coleridge and Neoplatonism, the British experimental novel of the 1960s and 1970s, The Liberal and Anglo-Italian cultural relations, language, rivers and ecopoetics in Scottish literature and contemporary New Nature Writing.
9. Editorial activity and peer review
I am editor of the series “L’eredità di Babele”, published by Monte Università Parma.
I am a member of the Scientific Committee of the journal La Torre di Babele, of the editorial office of La Questione Romantica, of the International Advisory Board of the International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen, and of the Scientific Committees of the book series “Darcy” and “Palcoscenici”, published by Rogas Edizioni.
I have served as a member of the Editorial Board of Textus and carry out peer-review activity for national and international scholarly journals.
10. Research centres, laboratories and scholarly associations
Since 2011 I have been a member and the Parma representative of the Interuniversity Centre for the Study of Romanticism, CISR.
I am a member of the Environmental Social Humanities Laboratory, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Neurosciences and Humanities, the Inter-University Centre Geolitterae, the University Centre for Bioethical Studies of the University of Parma, the Inter-University Research Centre for the Memory of the Performing Arts, MAP, the naMec Centre – Asian, Nomadic Cultures, Mobility and Environment Study Centre, and RADAC – Recherches sur les arts dramatiques anglophones contemporains.
Since 2025 I have been a member of the PHASSES Cluster, Philosophy, Humanities, and Social Sciences – Environment and Sustainability, of the University of Parma’s EU GREEN Alliance.
I am a member of several scholarly associations, including The James Hogg Society, the Association for Scottish Literature, the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, the European Society for the Study of English, the Italian Association of English Studies, the International Association of University Professors of English, the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, the British Association for Romantic Studies, the Newstead Abbey Byron Society, the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures and the Keats-Shelley Association of America.
11. Institutional, administrative and organizational duties
Since 1 January 2024 I have been Chair of the BA degree programme in Modern Foreign Languages and Civilizations at the University of Parma.
Since 2024 I have been a member of the Department Board and of the Department Teaching Committee of the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, as well as a member of the Departmental Committee for the Teaching Coordination of Language Experts.
Since 15 July 2024 I have been a member of the Scientific Council of the Doctoral School of the University of Parma.
Since 2021 I have been ambassador for the University of Parma in the international GALA network, Global Academy of Liberal Arts, coordinated by Bath Spa University.
Since 2019 I have been a member of the committee responsible for defining and implementing procedures for assessing the Italian language proficiency of international students.
Since 2017 I have coordinated the international mobility project for students and teaching staff between the University of Parma and the University of Ningbo-Nottingham, China, within the University of Parma’s Overworld Programme.
From 2013 to 2017 I served as the Rector’s Delegate for International Student Mobility. From 2017 to 2023 I was Chair of the Department Committee for International Mobility.
I have also served as Deputy Chair of the degree programme in Modern Foreign Languages and Civilizations, representative for the Parma site of the Parma-Modena inter-university MA degree programme in Languages, Cultures and Communication, member of internationalization working groups, and member of the University of Parma ECTS Working Group.
12. Other offices and roles
I am a member of the ANVUR Register of Reviewers and of the REPRISE Register of Reviewers of the Italian Ministry of University and Research.
From 2015 to 2019 I was a member of the Executive Board of the Italian Association of English Studies; from 2017 to 2019 I served as its Vice-President.
Last update: May 2026
