Photo credit: Luigi Meneghello by Effigie Edizioni
Resistance fighter and celebrated writer Luigi Meneghello (1922–2007) started the teaching of Italian at Reading in 1948.
Since then, our Italian studies programme has been defined by a multi-disciplinary and inclusive approach to teaching and research, with current strengths in Italian literature (1800–present), history of the Italian language, translation studies, linguistics, migration studies, women's studies, history of ideas and publishing history.
Italian studies at Reading have a long track record of research success. The PhD programme in Italian studies has consistently attracted accomplished postgraduate students from overseas as well as from the UK.
Italian studies at Reading are also the first home of The Italianist, a multi-disciplinary, A-rated journal with an international reputation, which was founded in Reading in 1980.
Research centres
Staff in Italian studies contribute to the activities of the following research centres:
- Research Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing
- Research Centre for Health Humanities
- Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism
Staff research interests
We are happy to supervise graduate students in the following areas:
Professor Federico Faloppa
- History of the Italian Language
- Italian linguistics and dialectology
- Migration studies: media, policies, discourses
- Hate speech and anti-racist discourses
- Language policy
- Critical discourse analysis
Staff research activities and collaborations
Dott.ssa Rita Balestrini
Dott.ssa Rita Balestrini’s interests lie primarily in language assessment, evaluation, and independent learning. Balestrini’s pedagogical research explores the discourses informing the policies and practices of modern languages as a discipline.
Dr Chiara Ciarlo
Dr Chiara Ciarlo’s research interest is in the acquisition and expressions of agreement in L1 and L2 speakers, and its variation in adult speakers. She has carried out research on the acquisition and use of oblique subject pronouns in English-speaking children, and on the variation of subject clitic pronouns in Italian varieties.
She is currently studying the acquisition of agreement in foreign language learners, and how theoretical knowledge of this particular linguistic phenomenon can inform language pedagogy.
Professor Federico Faloppa
Professor Federico Faloppa has participated as co-investigator on various externally-funded research projects focusing on migration and language, including the AHRC-funded international network Researching and Documenting Key Words in European Migration Discourses and the ESRC-funded international network ProLanguage, which focuses on language policies and practices in refugee settings.
Prof Faloppa was a work-package lead in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) MultiMind (2018-2022).
He collaborates with the Academia della Crusca and is a consultant for the Italian NGO Carta di Roma. Professor Faloppa is an executive member of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) and of the Alexander Langer Foundation.
Professor Daniela La Penna
Professor Daniela La Penna is the co-founder and co-director of the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing. She is is co-Editor of The Italianist and sits on the editorial boards of several journals. She has led and participated in numerous externally-funded projects funded by the AHRC, British Academy, Leverhulme and MSCA.
Professor La Penna is the recipient of a Leverhulme fellowship (2023-24) for research leading to a monograph on Jonathan Cape’s translators’ networks. She was Principal Investigator of Mapping Literary Space in Post-War Italy: Publishing Institutions and Literary Journals (AHRC, 2012-2015).
She was Co-Investigator for the Leverhulme international network Diasporic Literary Archives (2012-2014), which has established partnerships with the Beinecke Library at Yale University; Centro Manoscritti in Pavia; l'Institut Mémoires de l'Edition Contemporaine (IMEC) in France; The National Library and Archives Service of Namibia, and prominent archivists from Trinidad and Tobago.
She was Principal Investigator of Mapping Literary Space in Post-War Italy: Publishing Institutions and Literary Journals (AHRC, 2012-2015).
Dr Charles L. Leavitt IV, Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Charles L. Leavitt IV is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame (US) and a former member of the department. He specialises in modern Italian literature and cinema in a comparative context.
He was formerly an Annese Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and a Presidential Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame (USA).
Dr Paola Nasti, Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Paola Nasti is Associate Professor of Italian at the Northwestern University (US) and a former member of the department. A leading scholar in Dante Studies, Dr Nasti is a member of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies.
Dott.ssa Enza Siciliano Verruccio
Dott.ssa Enza Siciliano Verruccio is interested in:
- language curriculum design and development
- ab initio language learning and teaching
- technology-enhanced language learning and teaching
- the role of explicit instruction in SLA
- language teacher training.
Recent and current doctoral research projects
How do inter-firm circulation agreements affect authors’ reception in the publishing field? The Einaudi-Mondadori agreements of 1957 and 1967 (ongoing)
- Cristina De Luca (SWW DTP)
- Supervisors: Professor Professor Daniela La Penna and Professor Ruth Glynn (Bristol)
The Memory of Women Resistance Fighters in Italy and France (ongoing)
- Martina Biavati (SWW DTP)
- Supervisors: Professor Daniela La Penna and Professor Claire Gorrara (Cardiff)
Cecil and Sylvia Sprigge’s role in the cultural relations between the UK and Italy (1920s-1950s) (ongoing)
- Penny Ditchfield
- Supervisor: Professor Daniela La Penna
Un recupero della memoria scritta e orale di Carmelo Bene (2024)
- Carlo Felice Petruzzi
- Supervisors: Professor Daniela La Penna
‘It always started with Nanda’: Fernanda Pivano and the Italian reception of the Beat generation (2022)
- Andrea Romanzi (SWW DTP)
- Supervisors: Professor Daniela La Penna and Dr Carol O'Sullivan (Bristol).
Dante e le Confraternite (2021)
- Michael Biasin
- Supervisor: Dr Paola Nasti
Percezione degli ebrei e conoscenza della cultura ebraica in Dante e nell’Italia medievale (2021)
- Jacopo Buffo
- Supervisors: Professor Daniela La Penna (formerly supervised by Dr Paola Nasti, Professor Catherine Leglu and Dr George Ferzoco).
British Military Encounters with Italian Civilians 1943-1946 (2021)
- Fabio Simonetti (AHRC)
- Supervisors: Professor Daniela La Penna and Dr Suzanne Bardgett (Imperial War Museums)
Italian intellectual Diaspora in the UK: Luigi Meneghello and Carlo Dionisotti (2019)
- Marta Pozzolo (SWW DTP)
- Supervisors: Professor Daniela La Penna and Professor Charles Burdett (Bristol)
Recent and ongoing PhDs in Italian studies span a broad range of periods and topics, and we welcome enquiries and proposals relating both to discrete specialisms and to interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work.