I am Professor of Italian Art and Literature at Durham University, working at the crossroads of cultural history, visual studies, and literary scholarship. My research explores themes ranging from Renaissance humanism and the medical discourse on love to 19th-century art, architecture, and cinema. I have held fellowships and visiting positions in Europe and the Americas, including at the Getty Research Institute, the University of São Paulo, UNAM (Mexico City), and Villa I Tatti in Florence. Alongside my research, I enjoy building international collaborations that connect art history, literature, and cultural heritage studies.
My current project focuses on Fabiola (1854) a foundational Victorian novel by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman tracing its global reception through translations adaptations and visual culture. I am especially interested in how the novel shaped debates on religion identity and cultural memory in the 19th century and beyond. This work engages with questions of world literature religious history and heritage studies and I am keen to connect with colleagues exploring the intersections of literature art and cultural transmission across languages and nations. Beyond this I am also fascinated by the academic enterprise itself — both its procedures and its creative dimension whether in teaching or research. In this vein I explore productivity in scholarship especially the processes of note-taking and note-making which I like to investigate both in their historical dimensions and in their practical technological applications including the use of digital tools and AI.
