I teach Maltese literature and literary representations of the Mediterranean in the Department of Maltese at the University of Malta and an introductory course on Maltese language and literature at Inalco in Paris. My doctoral thesis about the use of metaphor to construct the national imaginary was supervized by Oliver Friggieri and Joseph A. Buttigieg (University of Notre Dame).
I have published academic works in Maltese, English and Italian and read papers at academic events around the world. In 2014 I co-edited (with Simone Galea) and co-authored a volume on The Teacher, Literature and the Mediterranean (Sense, Rotterdam).
In 2013 I organized the first national cross-disciplinary conference on the irreverent Maltese author Juann Mamo (1886-1941) hosted by the Department of Maltese, and I edited the first three books in a series on the author and his works (SKS). Although I have written about the nationalist poetry of Dun Karm, much of my research in recent years has focused on Mamo and the Realist writers of the interwar period. My reading of Mamo's work, especially his novel Ulied in-nanna Venut fl-Amerka (1930-31), is partly inspired by postcolonial perspectives and the complex role of the narrator.
A keynote speech I gave in 2014 at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford was published as a chapter on “The Mediterranean Novel Defying Borders” in the book Minding Borders. Resilient Divisions in Literature, the Body and the Academy (Legenda, 2017).
In 2016 I helped set up, and coordinate, the Diploma in Maltese Literature and a interdisciplinary project on Maltese Oral Traditions, both run by the Department of Maltese in the Faculty of Arts.
I have written critical introductions to literary works by contemporary Maltese writers, including Clare Azzopardi, Norbert Bugeja, Claudia Gauci, John Portelli, and Mario Cardona.
In 2020 I gave a talk at Inalco about political rhetoric in Malta.
As coordinator of the Mediterranean cultural organization Inizjamed, set up in 1998, I was the artistic director of the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival between 2007 and 2018. www.adriangrima.org
