About
The Italian Research seminar is convened by DPhil students and seeks to bring together members of the sub-faculty at all levels (professors, researchers, and students), as well as anyone interested in any aspect of Italian studies. All of our events take place during term time, mostly on Mondays at 5.15 PM at the Taylor Institution Library.
Although the seminars are often examples of high-level research, they are accessible to anyone with some knowledge of Italian literature, language, and culture, allowing for vibrant dialogue among a wide range of specialists. Our events range from seminars on recent and ongoing research, to methodological roundtables, to book presentations, to workshops on various issues connected with graduate and postgraduate life.
We often host speakers from other universities from across the globe. In recent years, our speakers have included Prof Virginia Cox (University of Cambridge), Prof Catherine Keen (University College London), Prof Corrado Bologna (Scuola Normale Superiore), Eva del Soldato (University of Pennsylvania), and Dr Rhiannon Daniels (University of Bristol), as well as current and former members from our own faculty, including Profs Emma Bond, Guido Bonsaver, Simon Gilson, Charlotte Ross, and Francesca Southerden.
We also often hold seminars in tandem with ISO (Italian Studies at Oxford), and occasionally with the Early Modern Italian Italian Seminar, Italian Poetry Today, and LEO (Leopardi Studies at Oxford).
If you have any questions, or you would like to be in touch with the organising committee, please email italian.res-sem@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
The coordinators for 2025-2026 are Kate McKee and Victoria White.
Michaelmas 2025
Mondays, Taylorian Room 2
Week 1
Ruth Glynn (Bristol)
Book launch for Naples and the Nation. Image, Media and Culture in the Second Republic
Week 2 - 1 PM
Kate Travers (Warwick)
Lyric Geographies: Imagining Place in the Poetry of Medieval Italy
Week 3 - 5:15 PM
Alessandro Carlucci (Oxford)
Some thoughts and recent research on the role of translation in the history of the Italian language
Week 4 - 5:15 PM
Yorick Gomez Gane (Calabria)
Gender and Language in Italian and Other Romance Languages
Week 5 - 1 PM
Ryan Pepin (York)
‘Dietro la memoria non può ire’: Copyists’ Slips in the Textual Tradition of the Commedia
Week 6 - 1 PM
Selena Daly (UCL)
Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War
Week 7 - 1 PM
Nicolò Crisafi (Cambridge)
Three tales to take down Dante: Boccaccio’s reductio ad absurdum of teleological narratives
Week 8 - Postponed to March 2nd, 2026!
Elena Sottilotta (Cambridge)
Seeking Wonder in the Long Nineteenth Century: Women, Folklore, and Fairy Tales from a Transnational Perspective