Susana Silva, a native speaker of European Portuguese, has been teaching in the Portuguese Language Courses (Lettorati) at the University of Parma since 2020. She holds a degree in European Studies (University of Lisbon, Portugal), a Master's in European Policy (University of Lisbon, Portugal), and a Master's in Portuguese as a Second/Foreign Language (University of Porto, Portugal).
Her professional career spans several Italian academic institutions: La Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Milan (La Statale), and the Johns Hopkins University (SAIS Europe), Bologna. She remains a member of the "Cátedra António Lobo Antunes" at the University of Milan – Camões, I.P.
Her work in Portuguese language teaching includes instruction, the design and management of language courses, and the development of workshop- and project-based activities—such as teletandem projects and subtitling workshops—aimed at deepening learners' linguistic and communicative skills in reception, production, interaction, and mediation, through an action-oriented approach.
Her research interests include the teaching of Portuguese as a Second and Foreign Language, linguistic mediation, and language policy (ORCID: 0009-0007-8691-5154).
In the specific field of linguistic mediation, she has published the articles "A Mediação na Didática das Línguas: uma análise evolutiva do QECR ao QECR-VC" (Linguarum Arena, Revista de estudos em didática de línguas da Universidade do Porto, 2025) and "Estratégias de mediação no ensino-aprendizagem de Português como Língua Segunda e Estrangeira: contributo para um inventário linguístico" (Limite. Revista de estudios portugueses y de la lusofonía, Universidade da Extremadura, 2025). She has also conducted teacher training on this topic on behalf of Camões — Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua I.P., Coordination of Portuguese Teaching Abroad – South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Namibia, and Zimbabwe in 2025.
She works as a translator and editor between Italian and Portuguese, with a particular focus on texts in the linguistic, literary, and intercultural fields. She translated into Portuguese A Resistência Continua. O Colonialismo Português, As Lutas de Libertação e os Intelectuais Italianos (Vincenzo Russo, Porto, Edições Afrontamento, 2022) and A Literatura Portuguesa – Modos de Ler (Roberto Vecchi and Vincenzo Russo, eds., preface by Eduardo Lourenço, Lisbon, Glaciar, 2022).
