Speakers and Chairs for the Anglo-Italian Conference
Serena Baiesi is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna where she teaches British Romanticism. Her research projects and publications are related to Romantic poetry, Leigh Hunt and political writings, Mary Shelley, Gothic literature, Jane Austen, Romantic theatre and slavery literature. She is the representative of CISR (Inter-university Centre for the Study of Romanticism) at the University of Bologna, and the coordinator of the PhD program in Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures: Diversity and Inclusion.
Glen Bonnici is Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Italian within the Faculty of Arts of the University of Malta where he teaches Italian language and literature, comparative literature and film studies. He researches Italian literature and cinema, reflexive narrative works, spatial representation in fiction and adaptations, amongst other topics. His ongoing Ph.D. studies examine metareference in contemporary Italian cinema. He is an Editorial Assistant in the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies.
Eleonora Buonocore is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta (Canada), where she directs the Italian Center (Il Circolino). She received her second PhD from Yale University in 2016. In 2021-22 she was a fellow at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities working on her monograph on the concept of memory in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Her research lies at the intersection between philosophy and literature in the Medieval world, in Dante and in early Renaissance thought. She has published articles in Studia Lulliana on Ramon Lull and Lullism and edited chapters on Giordano Bruno’s ethical works. She has co-edited a volume of Studium (2021) in which she also published an article on Dante’s Convivio and Monarchia. Moreover, she has published articles on Italian women writers such as Carolina Invernizio and on Italian Film.
Alessandro Cabiati is Researcher in English Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. From 2021 to 2024, as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Ca’ Foscari and Brown University, he worked on the research project MadLand – Madness in Fairy Land. His research and teaching interests are in the area of 19th-century literature and culture, focusing in particular on the literary fairy tale, the Gothic and post-apocalyptic narratives. Forthcoming publications include the monograph Ogresses of Crime Narratives (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and the Marvels & Tales special issue Norm and Transgression in the Fairy-Tale Tradition (with Lewis Seifert, 2025). Most recently, he published the article “Gothic Terror and Female Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Adaptations of ‘Bluebeard’” (Humanities, 2023) and edited, in collaboration with Laura Tosi, the special issue of Literature titled (Re)Defining Fairy-Tale Horror from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (2024).
Ivan Callus is Professor of English at the University of Malta. He has published widely in the areas of contemporary fiction, literary theory and posthumanism. He is the founding co-editor, with James Corby, of CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary, launched with Edinburgh University Press in 2015. With Stefan Herbrechter, he is the co-editor of the Critical Posthumanisms book series, published by De Gruyter Brill.
Fernando Cioni is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Florence, where he is Head of the PhD program in Comparative Language, Literatures and Cultures. His research interests include Shakespeare, editing, contemporary drama and the history of British theatre. He has been recipient of several fellowships from The Richmond College (1992), The Huntington Library (2004), The Folger Shakespeare Library (1998 and 2006), The Bibliographical Society of America (2006). He was a Fulbright Research Scholar at GWU, Washington DC (2001). He is the author of more than 90 essays, articles and book chapters, published in international and Italian journals. His book chapters have been published by Manchester University Press, Peter Lang, Malta University Press and Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. He is co-editor with Keir Elam of A Civil Conversation: Anglo-Italian Literary and Cultural Exchange in the Renaissance (2003) and, with Virginia Mason Vaughan and Jacqulyne Bessel, of Speaking Pictures: The Visual/Verbal Nexus of Dramatic Performance (2010). He is the author of books on The Merchant of Venice (2018), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2022) and of a fully annotated edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a translation into Italian (2024), as well as studies on adaptations and appropriations. He is head of the Florence Unit of the Inter-University Centre for the Study of the Romanticism and member of the scientific board of the Centre.
James Corby is Professor and Head of the Department of English at the University of Malta, where he lectures on poetry, contemporary fiction, literary theory and drama. Together with Ivan Callus he is a founding editor of the journal CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary, which is published three times a year by Edinburgh University Press. He is also a founding member of the Futures of Literature Network, a research network based in Malta. He has published widely on literature, and philosophy, including work on romanticism, modernism, phenomenology, performance, politics, literary theory, and contemporary literature. In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the English Association.
Francesca Crisante is Lecturer of English Literature at the University of Messina. She specializes in Victorian literature and culture, as well as modernist novels, particularly focusing on writers Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Katherine Mansfield. Currently, she is working on the Italian-themed narratives of Ouida. In addition to writing the monograph Virginia Woolf e le ombre del passato (Solfanelli, 2022), she has authored numerous articles on English and American authors (Daniel Defoe, Thomas Carlyle, Bulwer Lytton, Leslie Stephen, John Steinbeck, John Fante, etc.). Recently, she published the volume Come leggere “Orlando” (Solfanelli, 2023). She is part of the Scientific Committee of the English Studies series CriLet (Edizioni Croce) and is a member of the Centre for Victorian and Edwardian Studies (CUSVE – Chieti, Italy).
Manuela D’Amore is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Catania. The author of several essays and literary translations, she has researched in the fields of gender studies, as well as of travel and migrant writing. Her latest monographs, The Royal Society and the Discovery of the Two Sicilies: Southern Routes in the Grand Tour (ANDA Prize 2018) and Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain: Time, Transnational Identities and Hybridity, were respectively published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017 and 2023.
Francesco De Renzo is Professor of Modern Language Didactics at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Sapienza – University of Rome, where he also serves as the Director of the Advanced Master’s Program in Specialized Translation. His research focuses on language education, contemporary Italian, language teaching and learning, teacher training, Italian as a second language (L2), intercultural integration, multilingualism, and the linguistic rights of minority groups. He actively engages in teaching, research and training on these topics, collaborating with universities, schools and educational institutions both nationally and internationally. He is a member of the Doctoral College in Documentary, Geographical, Linguistic and Literary Sciences at Sapienza – University of Rome and oversees various international cultural exchange agreements. He is a member of Giscel (Intervention and Study Group in the Field of Linguistic Education) and the Italian Linguistics Society (SLI), as well as a founding member of the Society for the Philosophy of Language (SFli) and Dille (Italian Society for Language Didactics and Educational Linguistics).
Fabrizio Foni (Umbertide, 1980) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian and a member of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies at the University of Malta. He specialises in popular culture, with research interests spanning the Gothic and the Fantastic, occultism and occulture, horror and science fiction, posthumanism, the adventure novels of Emilio Salgari and his followers, and the multifaceted representations of sideshows and freaks in both fiction and journalism. He is the author of Alla fiera dei mostri: Racconti pulp, orrori e arcane fantasticherie nelle riviste italiane, 1899-1932 (Tunué, 2007) and Piccoli mostri crescono: Nero, fantastico e bizzarrie varie nella prima annata de “La Domenica del Corriere” (1899) (Perdisa Pop, 2010). He also edited the fiction anthologies Il gran ballo dei tavolini: Sette racconti fantastici da “La Domenica del Corriere” (Nerosubianco, 2008) and Ottocento nero italiano: Narrativa fantastica e crudele (Aragno, 2009, with Claudio Gallo). Together with Stefano Lazzarin and others, he co-authored Il fantastico italiano: Bilancio critico e bibliografia commentata (dal 1980 a oggi) (Le Monnier Università, 2016), the most comprehensive annotated bibliography of criticism on the Fantastic in Italian literature.
Hal Gladfelder is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Manchester, with a focus on literature and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His books include Criminality and Narrative in Eighteenth-Century England (2001) and Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland (2012), and a critical edition of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Polly (2013). His current work focuses on the history of pornography, and on the legacy of the castrato in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe.
Gloria Lauri-Lucente is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Malta. She is Head of the Department of Italian and Director of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies. She designed and is the coordinator of the MA programme in Film Studies. She is editor and co-editor of a number of critical collections and has authored numerous articles on Anglo-Italian Studies, Film Studies and Comparative Literature. She is the volume editor of the Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies. She is an Honorary Member of CUSVE (Centro Universitario di Studi Vittoriani e Edoardiani, Università degli Studi “G. d'Annunzio” Chieti-Pescara). She is currently completing a monograph on filmic and television adaptations of Victorian and Neo-Victorian Literature.
Flavia Laviosa is Senior Lecturer in the Department of French, Francophone and Italian Studies at Wellesley College. Her research interests are in violence against women in world cinema and in Italian women filmmakers on which she has published extensively. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies and the book series Trajectories, both published by Intellect. She has also guest-edited the Special Issue of Studies in European Cinema, “Cinematic Journeys of Italian Women Directors” (8:2, 2011) and edited Visions of Struggle in Women’s Filmmaking in the Mediterranean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Michela Marroni is Associate Professor of English at the University of Teramo (Italy). She has published numerous articles on traductology and, notably, on literary translations. Her most recent publications are Dialoghi traduttologici: il testo letterario e la lingua inglese (Chieti, Solfanelli, 2018) and Eleanor Marx: traduttrice vittoriana e militante ribelle (Pisa, ETS, 2021). Her annotated translation of David Copperfield (Milano, Feltrinelli) appeared in 2023. She sits on the editorial board of RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani and Merope and serves as vice editor-in-chief of Traduttologia. She is co-editor of the series Riverrun (Aracne, Rome) and Il Dragone Blu (Solfanelli, Chieti). She is a member of the Centre for Victorian and Edwardian Studies (Chieti, Italy).
Marina Morbiducci is Associate Professor in English Language and Translation at Sapienza University, Rome. Her research interests span from Translation Studies to Critical Discourse Analysis, recently adding also the field of Narrative Medicine. She is a Gertrude Stein scholar, producing first-hand Italian translations of her works Tender Buttons, Last Operas and Plays, Lifting Belly. She also published two monographs on Stein and several critical articles (1987-2022). In addition to Stein’s oeuvre, she devoted her critical and translational attention to the Black Mountain College Poets, the US experimental poet Kathleen Fraser and the British poet Charles Tomlinson. Her most recent translation of poetry is Joseph Bathanti’s Sempre Fidele and Other poems, a bilingual edition with a critical introduction.
Ilaria Natali is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Florence. Her research focuses on modern manuscripts, literary writing processes and the interplay between textual production and reception, particularly in twentieth-century literature. She has also worked extensively on the intersections between literature and the history of medicine, with a particular emphasis on the representation of mental health in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts. Her interests further extend to Anglo-Italian literary relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring how cultural exchanges shape literary forms and critical traditions. She has published widely on these subjects, contributing to monographs, journal articles and edited volumes. In addition to her research and teaching, she has been General Editor of the peer-reviewed journal LEA since 2020 and actively collaborates on international research projects.
Francesca Orestano taught English Literature at the University of Milan. She authored books on John Neal, on William Gilpin, on visual culture and literature. She edited Dickens and Italy (2009); History and Narration (2011); New Bearings in Dickens Criticism (2012); Not Just Porridge. English Literati at Table (2017); Some Keywords in Dickens (2021); Lady Gardeners: Seeds, Roots, Propagation from England to the Wider World (2023). Awarded the 2025 Dickens Fellowship Prize, she has forthcoming articles on “Dickens and Chromophobia in American Notes”; “The Empty Chair: Nostalgia, Celebrity, Heritage”; “John Ruskin and Climate: The Storm-Cloud of the Anthropocene”.
Nicholas Roe is Wardlaw Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland's oldest University founded in 1413. He is the author of critically acclaimed biographies and studies including Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years (1988), John Keats and the Culture of Dissent (1997) and Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt (2004). His two most recently published books are an edited collection, John Keats and the Medical Imagination (2017) and a revised and updated second edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Radical Years (2018). John Keats and the Perils of Posterity will be published by Oxford University Press in September 2025.
Inês Rosa currently teaches British Literature and Culture at the University of Lisbon. Her doctorate is on the intersection of poetry and politics in the work of William Wordsworth. She has completed her MSt in English at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was previously a Visiting Researcher at the University of Chicago.
Anna Enrichetta Soccio is Full Professor of English Literature at “G. d’Annunzio” University, Chieti and Pescara, Italy. She has published a number of books and of articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century topics and authors, such as Austen, Scott, Gaskell, Dickens, Thomson, Wilde, Larkin and many others. She is Director of CUSVE, (University Centre for the Victorian and Edwardian Studies) and Coordinator of a PhD programme in English Studies.
Giona Tuccini is of Florentine training. Former full professor of Italian literature at the University of Cape Town where he headed the Italian Section of the Faculty of Humanities, he now teaches modern and contemporary Italian literature at the "Aldo Moro" University of Bari. He is a member of the Steering Committee of “Studi Pasoliniani” and is affiliated with the Academy of Arcadia in Rome. In addition to having dealt with mysticism, with particular attention to medieval religious literature, the Christian Renaissance and early twentieth-century spiritual culture, he has devoted himself to the study of the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Enrico Pea. His bibliography on Pasolini includes the volumes The Urinal and the Bridal Gown. Facets and Duties of Poetry in the Work of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Udine 2003), Worthy of Heaven. Plebeian humanism and the poetics of sacrifice in Pasolini's “Accattone” (Rome 2021) and, more recently, Elegies of Chaos. Classical Civilisation and Modern Culture in Pasolini’s Work (Rome 2024).
Peter Vassallo is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Malta. He was a Commonwealth Fellow at Oxford University where he obtained the degrees of MA and DPhil. He specialised in Romantic Literature and has published widely in this field and on Anglo-Italian literary relations. He was formerly head of the English Department and Chair of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies. He is general editor of the Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies which he founded. He is author of Byron: The Italian Literary Influence (1984) and editor of Byron and the Mediterranean (1986). He also authored the monographs British Writers and the Experience of Italy (1800-1940) (2012) and The Lure of Italy: Studies in Anglo-Italian Literary and Cultural Relations (2024). He is a Fellow of the English Association and was a former President of the International Association of University Professors of English.
Nigel Wood is an Emeritus Professor of Literature at Loughborough University, UK. He has recently published Shakespeare and Reception Theory (2022) and he has co-edited two editions (with David Lodge) of Modern Theory and Criticism (2009 and 2015). He was also the General Editor of the Open University Press’s Theory in Practice series.
Alison Yarrington is Professor Emerita of Art History (Loughborough University) and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow (University of Glasgow). Her research and publications focus upon the Anglo-Italian marble trade, sculpture’s display and collecting histories, women sculptors, British art c.1750-1914. She was academic adviser to the Chatsworth Sculpture Gallery redisplay, PI for the AHRC/BA- funded project Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951 – https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/ – and chairs the Sculpture Journal Advisory Board.
