I am Lecturer in Italian Language in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. My teaching focuses on Italian language across the undergraduate curriculum. My research interests lie in modern and contemporary Italian literature, translation studies, and the history of publishing, with particular attention to women translators and transnational literary exchange in the twentieth century.
From 2022 to 2024 I was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Università degli Studi di Milano, where I led the project Women Translators in Italian Publishing (WTIP). My research combines archival work with literary and cultural analysis, and explores the role of translation in shaping modern Italian literary culture, especially through the work of figures such as Giovanni Giudici, Natalia Ginzburg, Lalla Romano and Adriana Motti. I In 2024 I created a podcast, Libri Oltreconfine (www.librioltreconfine.it), with the aim of giving voice to literary translators.
Academic Background
I studied Italian Literature at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, and completed a D.Phil. in Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. After several years working at Oxford as a Part-time Lecturer and Language Tutor (2010–16), I was appointed Lecturer in Italian at the University of Manchester (2016–17). I am currently Lecturer in Italian Language at the University of Oxford.
Teaching
At Oxford I teach Italian language across the undergraduate curriculum, covering grammar, translation, writing, reading, listening and speaking skills. I have also taught modern and contemporary Italian literature, for Keble College and the Sub-Faculty of Italian.
Alongside my Oxford teaching, I regularly deliver graduate and doctoral lectures in Italy and elsewhere on translation studies, history of the book, women translators, and archival research methods.
Research
My research interests include:
- Modern and contemporary Italian literature
- Translation studies and translator authorship
- Women translators and editors in twentieth-century publishing
- Literary archives and the history of the book
- Anglo-Italian literary relations
I am currently involved in the international research network Women in Literary and Publishers’ Archives: Writing and Translating in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries.
Selected Publications
Monograph
La lingua del padrone: Giovanni Giudici traduttore dall’inglese (Rubbettino, 2020)
Edited volumes
Memorie di una traduttrice, by Adriana Motti, edited by Teresa Franco (Einaudi, 2025).
This volume is published as Einaudi’s annual limited-edition plaquette (fuori commercio) dedicated to Adriana Motti (1924–2009).
Lady Lazarus e altre poesie, by Sylvia Plath, translated by Giovanni Giudici (Mondadori, 2023), new edition
(with Cecilia Piantanida), Echoing Voices in Italian Literature: Tradition and Translation in the 20th Century (Cambridge Scholars, 2018)
Articles and chapters
I have published widely on translation, women’s writing, and Italian literary culture in journals such as Italian Studies, The Italianist, Paragone, and Studi Novecenteschi, as well as in edited volumes with Palgrave Macmillan, Edinburgh University Press, Classiques Garnier, and Ronzani Editore.
Peer-reviewed Articles:
"A Voice for the Partisans: Natalia Ginzburg Translator of Made in Italy (forthcoming in the special issue of Women and Gender in Italy, ed. by Helena Sanson)
'"Nascere una seconda volta": il romanzo di Sylvia Plath nelle traduzioni italiane' in Paragone, agosto-dicembre, 2020, anno LXXI, nn. 150-151-152, pp. 138-159
'L’immaginario della traduzione nell’opera di Natalia Ginzburg’ in Italian Studies, 75, 2, 2020, pp. 1-14
'Giovanni Giudici', in Rivista Tradurre, n. 18, primavera 2020 (online)
‘L’ironia romanzesca di John Crowe Ransom nella traduzione di Giovanni Giudici’, in Studi Novecenteschi, gennaio-giugno 2018, anno XLV, n. 95, pp. 121-141
‘Memorie metropolitane nella scrittura di Corrado Stajano’, Paragone, agosto-dicembre 2016, anno LXVII, nn. 126-127-128, pp. 170-171
‘Essere Giovanni: poesia e autobiografia in Giudici’, in ‘Nomina sunt...? L'onomastica tra storia della lingua, ermeneutica e comparatistica’. Atti delle giornate di studio, Venezia 3-4 marzo 2016, a cura di M. P. Arpioni, A. Ceschin e G. Tomazzoli, con una prefazione di Carla Marcato, Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, Venezia 2016, pp. 231-244
‘Quaderni e Taccuini di Giovanni Giudici, anni 1949-1957’, in ‘Giovanni Giudici, ovvero le fondamenta dell’opera’, special issue of Istmi, a cura di Carlo Londero, ottobre 2015, nn. 35- 36, pp. 25-135
‘«Qui sta il ricco e lo strano»: Giudici traduttore di Eliot’, in ‘Giovanni Giudici. I versi, la vita’, Atti del convegno, La Spezia, 12-13 September 2013, a cura di P. Polito e A. Zollino, «Memorie dell’Accademia Lunigianese di Scienze “G. Capellini”», LXXXV, 2016, pp. 271-286
‘«Io troppo mite a guerra così dura»: il calcio nell’opera’ di Giovanni Giudici in Paragone, febbraio – giugno 2015, nn. 117-118-119, pp. 151-173
‘La forza dell’errore, poesia e traduzione in Giovanni Giudici’, Italianistica, XLI, 2, 2012, pp. 91-109