Dr Daragh O’Connell

Position: Director of Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland

Affiliation: University College Cork

Daragh is the Director of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland (CDSI), and formerly head of the Department of Italian, UCC and Director of CASiLaC (Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures). He researches across three distinct areas: Dante Studies, Vico and Eighteenth-century Neapolitan Culture, and Modern and Contemporary Sicilian Literary Culture. He is currently working on a project tentatively titled: Courting Dante: Love and Politics in the ‘Divine Comedy’ which seeks to revisit Dante’s radical conception of the medieval court, both as a locus for articulations of love and as a site for political positioning.
He has co-edited four volumes on Dante: Nature and Nature in Dante: Literary and Theological Essays, with Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013); War and Peace in Dante: Essays Literary, Historical and Theological (Dublin: Four Courts, 2015), Dante and the Seven Deadly Sins, both with John C. Barnes (Dublin: Four Courts, 2017); and Dante e lo spazio: Luoghi reali e ideali nella vita e nell’opera dantesca, with M. Ottaviani (Florence: Cesati, 2024).

Other Dante-related publications include

1. O'Connell, Daragh, 'Lettura e interpretazione del canto x', in Voci sul Purgatorio di Dante: Una nuova lettura della seconda cantica, edited by Zygmunt G. Barański & Maria Antonietta Terzoli (Rome: Carocci, 2024), pp. 271-294.
2. O’Connell, Daragh, 'Analogymongering: Dante and Vico in Beckett', in Samuel Beckett's Italian Modernisms: Tradition, Texts, Performance, edited by M. Bariselli, D. Crosara, A. Gambacorta & M. Martino (London: Routledge, 2024), pp. 75-90.
3. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Il cortigiano celeste: Dante e lo spazio non spazio’, in Dante e lo spazio: Luoghi reali e ideali nella vita e nell’opera dantesca, edited by D. O’Connell & M. Ottaviani (Florence: Cesati, 2024), pp. 35-44.
4. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Kicking with the Other Foot: Dante in Ireland, Between Sectarianism and Nationalism’, Bibliotheca Dantesca, 6 (2024), pp. 289-310. DOI: Bibliotheca Dantesca, Vol. 6 | Manifold Scholarship (manifoldapp.org)
5. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Vita Nova VIII [3]’, in Dante’s “Vita Nova”: A Collaborative Reading, edited by Zygmunt G. Barański & Heather Webb (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), pp. 75-82.  
6. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘An Irish Dante, Part II: A Dantean Afterlife’, in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 444 (Winter 2022), pp. 401-411.
7. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Between concatenatio pulcra and the “Tyranny of Rhyme”: Translating Dante’s libello’, in J. Blakesley and F. Coluzzi (eds.) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Translation and Reception History: The Afterlife of Dante’s Vita Nova in the Anglophone World (London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 175-188.
8. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘“a poetar mi davano intelletto”: Virgil, Dante, Heaney’, in Liber amicorum: Medieval Studies, Translation, Creativity, edited by Corinna Salvadori & John Scattergood (Turin: Trauben, 2022), pp. 79-138. 
9. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘La consolazione di Dante: Echi danteschi ne Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio’, Mosaico italiano XIII: 211 (2022), pp. 7-18.
10. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘An Irish Dante, Part I: Possible Precursors to the Commedia’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 111: 442 (Summer, 2022), pp. 125-133.
11. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Dante’s “convento de le bianche stole”: Two Points Between Nudity and Folly’, in Nudity and Folly in Early Modern Italian Literature from Dante to Leopardi, edited by Simon Gilson and Ambra Moroncini (Florence: Cesati, 2022), pp. 29-52.
12. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘“Diverse voci fanno dolci note”: Dante Between Scholarship and Commemoration’, in Annali d’Italianistica, 39 (2021), pp. 412-426.
13. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Il canto della gola: Inferno VI, Ciacco fra Boccaccio e Benigni’, in Così «intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro»: Attraversare l’Inferno dantesco con Roberto Benigni, edited by Franco Musarra, Pacifico Ramazzotti, Andrea Aldo Robiglio, Bart Van Den Bossche (Florence: Cesati, 2021), pp. 49-67.
14. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Visible Speech: A Comedy Across Time’, in 100 Lithographs – Dante’s Divine Comedy – Liam Ó Broin, edited by Liam Ó Broin and Brain McAvera (Dublin: OPW Publishing, 2021), pp. 13-20
15. O’Connell, Daragh (with Beatrice Sica), ‘Literary Cultures in/and Italian Studies’, Italian Studies. Special Issue: Key Directions in Italian Studies 75:2 (2020), 125-139.
16. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘“Corti vizio”: Dante e l’idea cortese’, in Percorsi del testo: la letteratura italiana tra adattamento e appropriazione, edited by Sergio Portelli and KarlChircop (Florence: Cesati, 2020), pp. 31-40.
17. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Canto XVIII: ovvero, quando le parole cominciano a puzzare’, Letture dell’Inferno di Roberto Benigni, edited by Franco Musarra et al (Florence: Cesati, 2020), pp. 121-134.
18. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Resisting the Court: Courtesy and Courtliness in the Commedia’, in Resistance in Italian Culture from Dante to the 21st century, edited by Ambra Moroncini, Darrow Schecter and Fabio Vighi (Florence: Cesati, 2019), pp. 33-48.
19. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘“Whorish Eyes”: Envy at the Court of Vice’, in Barnes, John C. & O’Connell, Daragh, Dante and the Seven Deadly Sins: Literary and Theological Essays (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2017), pp. 91-123.
20. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Denti Alligator: The Dantification of Popular Culture’, in Kelly, Michael G. & O’Connell, Daragh, Comparative Becomings: Studies in Transition (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016), 19-46.
21. O’Connell, Daragh, ‘Dante’s Silent Ship: Similes, Swimming and Seafaring in the Commedia’, in O’Connell, D. & Petrie, J. (eds.), Nature and Nature in Dante: Literary and Theological Essays, with Jennifer Petrie (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013), pp. 121-151.

Dr George Rayson

Position: Co-Director Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland

Affiliation: Post-doctoral researcher at University College Cork

Education

PhD in Italian, University of Cambridge, October 2020-March 2024: ‘Dante’s hapax legomena in the Commedia: a study of poetic singularity’

MPhil in European, Latin American, and Comparative Literatures and Cultures, University of Cambridge, October 2019-June 2020

BA in English, University of York, October 2015-July 2018

Research interests

My research interests lie predominantly in Dante's strategies for choosing his words. Which languages or which spheres of social activity do they come from? Why does it matter that certain words are only used once? How useful is the term plurilingualism for understanding these strategies in the Commedia? I explore these issues in my forthcoming monograph, Dante's Hapax Legomena: The Words that Make the Commedia.

My latest research project, The Reasons of Rhyme in Medieval Italy explores why rhyme was so ubiquitous and so definitive of vernacular verse when Italian literary canons and an Italian written vernacular were first being established. Poets were 'rhymers' and their poems 'rhymes'. This project aims to establish rhyme at the centre of developments in a mature written vernacular which enabled the plurilingualism of, say, the Commedia to flourish.

More broadly I am interested in the multilingualism and globality of medieval Italy. How did nascent mercantilism figure in the language of literary texts on the Italian peninsula? I am committed to applying contemporary critical paradigms, e.g. ecocriticism and disability theory to medieval texts, having presented several such interventions at international conferences. 

Publications

Book chapter

‘Dante’s siren: femmina, serena, strega’ in Fantastic Creatures in Italian Literature: From the Age of Dante to Modernity, ed. by Giulia M. Cipriani and Paolo Rigo (New York: Bloomsbury, 2026 [Forthcoming]), pp. 63-89

Articles

‘A ‘Nuovo Ludo’ (Inf. XXII. 118): Hapax Legomena in Inferno’s Comic Core’ Italian Studies 80.3 (2025)

‘The Commedia’s -ilia rhymes: a Reading of Inferno XXVI and Paradiso XXVI’, Dante Notes, (August 14^th, 2022), https://www.dantesociety.org/node/172

‘Dante’s Winemaking Hapax Legomena: Textual and Theological Labour in the Commedia’, Notes in Italian Studies, 1 (2021), pp. 16-21

Dr Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė

Position: Co-Director of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland

Affiliation: Post-doc [former]/ Vilnius University / Van Leer Institute

Education:

• PhD in Italian (University of Cambridge, 2022)
• MPhil in European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures (University of Cambridge, 2018)
• BA (Hons) in English (University of Cambridge, 2017)

Dr Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė examines Dante and the transcultural and transmedial reception of premodern Italian literature from the perspectives of cognitive literary studies, sensory history, and affect studies. Her research interests include dream and visionary literature, the illuminations and illustrations of Dante’s Comedy, and the interconnections between English and Italian literary traditions.

At UCC in 2023-2024. She has also worked at Vilnius University, the University of Cambridge, and the John Rylands Research Institute.

Publications:

• ‘“E caddi come corpo morto cade”: Fainting Fits, Swooning Spells, and Near‑Death Experiences between Dante’s Vita nova and Commedia,’ Italian Studies, forthcoming in 2026.
• ‘19^th‑century Italian Women Writers Imagining Dante Alighieri’s Wife,’ Dante Studies, Forum ‘Women Scholars in Dante Studies,’ ed. Gaia Tomazzoli, forthcoming in 2026.
• ‘Dreamitation: Waking Visions, Body Doubles, and Authorial Self‑Fashioning from Boccaccio’s De casibus to Lydgate’s Fall of Princes,’ Exemplaria, special issue ‘Medieval Dreams: Between Perception and Cognition,’ ed. Mikhail Lopatin and Meghan Quinlan, forthcoming in 2026.
• ‘Botticelli: Purgatorio IX,’ in Dante Depicted: A Commentary on Image, Text, and Exegesis around the ‘Commedia’ (2024), Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz ‑ Max‑Planck‑ Link: https://dante.khi.fi.it/botticelli?chapter=purgatorio-ix.
• ‘(Extra)ordinary Sensation and Visionary Perception in Dante’s Purgatorio 15 and 17,’ Italian Studies, 78.3 (2023), 274‑ Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00751634.2023.2260694.
• ‘Vita nova XXIX [19.4–19.7],’ in Dante’s Vita nova: A Collaborative Reading, ed. Zygmunt Barański and Heather Webb (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2023), 269‑
• ‘Rapture and Visionary Violence in Dante’s Purgatorio 9,’ Annali d’Italianistica, 39 (2021), 247‑ Link: https://annali.org/volume-39-2021/.
• ‘Sensation (Un)bound: Literary Synaesthesia and Cross‑Sensory Perception in Dante’s Purgatorio 24,’Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies, 3 (2020), 86‑ Link: https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/5339.

Dr Valentina Mele

Position: Associate Director (USA)

Affiliation: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow (Università di Pavia | University of Notre Dame du Lac)/ Post-doc [former], UCC.

Dr. Valentina Mele is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow at the Università di Pavia and the University of Notre Dame (IN), where she investigates the reception of Dante in U.S. avant-garde poetic communities (1945–2001). She was previously a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds (2022-2025), where she researched the reception of Dante and Duecento poetry and culture among the poets of the “Berkeley Renaissance,” and co-directed the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies. From 2020 to 2022, she was an IRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Cork and an active member of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland.

Valentina holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (2020) and has an academic background in Italian Literature and Philology from the Università degli Studi di Padova (2010-2015), as well as an MSt in Medieval and Modern Languages from Somerville College, Oxford (2016). She is the editor of Cavalcanti dopo Cavalcanti. La ricezione di Guido Cavalcanti in Italia (Special Monographic Issue of Italianistica, 2024, LIII/2); author of “A me stesso di me pietate vène.” Forme della soggettività lirica nelle Rime di Guido Cavalcanti (Franco Cesati, 2025); and translator into Italian of Jack Spicer’s Language (TIC, 2023).

Research Interests:

Valentina’s research interests encompass, among other areas:

• Intersections between Italian, English, and U.S. literature;
• Aspects of poetry and poetics;
• Theoretical and linguistic approaches to subjectivity;
• Dante’s reception in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-American poetry;
• Literary reception, adaptation, and translation across Italian and Anglophone contexts.

Publications

Authored Books and Edited Volumes

1. Jack Spicer, Vancouver Lecture 1, translated and with an introductory essay by V. Mele (Milan: Edizioni del verri, forthcoming Summer 2026)
2. Forme della Soggettività lirica nelle Rime di Guido Cavalcanti (Florence: Franco Cesati 2025)
3. Cavalcanti After Cavalcanti. The Reception of Guido Cavalcanti in Italy. Special Monographic Issue, ed. by V. Mele, «Italianistica», vol. LIII/2 (2024)

Peer-reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

1. ‘«No kid, don’t enter here». La riscrittura epica della Commedia di Dante nella poesia di Jack Spicer’, in De quel monde la Comédie est-elle l’épopée? La mondializzazione di Dante. Special Monographic Issue, ed. by G. Sangirardi, «Italianistica», vol. LIV/1 – Accepted. Forthcoming Summer 2026, 7,500 words
2. ‘Dialogical Rites of Passage. Thom Gunn and Robert Duncan’, in Thom Gunn, a Prismatic Portrait: Poet, Teacher, Man, Friend, Lover, ed. S. Michelucci (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) – Accepted. Forthcoming Spring 2026, 3,000 words
3. The Years of Transition. 1900-1950 English translations of the Commedia’, in The Commedia in English, ed. T. Cachey, J. Blakesley and F. Pich (New York: Routledge, forthcoming January 2025) – Accepted. Forthcoming December 2025, 8,500 words
4. ‘Dante, Rossetti, Joyce L’edizione “preraffaellita” della Vita nuova nella biblioteca e nell’immaginario di James Joyce’, «Dante e l’Arte», vol. 11 (2024), 151-170
5. ‘Prefazione’, in Cavalcanti After Cavalcanti. The Reception of Guido Cavalcanti in Italy. Special Monographic Issue ed. by V. Mele, «Italianistica», vol. LIII/2 (2024), 11
6. ‘“Voce rimasi de l’antiche some”. Il motivo della voce in Cavalcanti e in Petrarca’, in Cavalcanti After Cavalcanti. The Reception of Guido Cavalcanti in Italy. Special Monographic Issue ed. by V. Mele, «Italianistica», vol. LIII/2 (2024), 33-41
7. ‘Chapter XXXII’, in Dante’s Vita Nova: A Collaborative Reading, ed. by Z. G. Baranski and H. Webb (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), pp. 291-296
8. ‘“A fraternity of poets”: The reception of Dante and the Vita nuova in the San Francisco Renaissance’, in The English Life of the Vita Nova. Translation and Reception from the Victorians to the Present, ed. J. Blakesley and F. Coluzzi (London and New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 155-172
9. ‘Le interiezioni della Vita nuova. Il caso di ‘deh’’, «Quaderni di Gargnano», vol. v (2022), 95-110
10. ‘La voce dolente degli oggetti. Lettura di Cavalcanti, Rime, XVIII’, in “Con Altra Voce”. Echi, variazioni e dissonanze nell’espressione letteraria. Atti del Seminario dottorale internazionale (Pisa, 8-9 ottobre 2018), (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2022), pp. 61-73
11. ‘Poematicità e teatro in versi nel Purgatorio di Mario Luzi’, «Quaderni d’italianistica», vol. 41.2 (2020; but 2021), 33-50.
12. ‘“I have in my translations tried to bring over the qualities of Guido”. Il Cavalcanti di Ezra Pound’, «L’Ulisse», vol. xxiii (2020), 326-338
13. ‘Diafanità e desiderio: l’incorporeità femminile nei sonetti “Willowwood’”di D. G. Rossetti’, «Studi Medievali e Moderni», xx (2016), 123-148

Reviews

1. Manuele Gragnolati, Francesca Southerden, Possibilities of Lyric. Reading Petrarch in Dialogue; with an epilogue by Antonella Anedda Angioy (Berlin, ICI Berlin Press, 2020), «Modern Language Review», 117/2 (2022), 300-302
2. David Bowe, Poetry in dialogue in the Duecento and Dante (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), «Annali d’Italianistica», 39 (2021), 444-445
3. Fabio A. Camilletti, The Portrait of Beatrice. Dante, D. G. Rossetti and the Imaginary Lady (Notre Dame (IND): University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), «Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies», vol. iii(2020), 171-173
4. Julia Caterina Hartley, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019), «Modern Language Review», 115/4 (2020), 891-892

Translations

1. Peter Gizzi, “Il presente è costante elegia”; “Ora fa buio”, translated by V. Mele, «Il Verri. Transocean (Unlimited)», vol. 82 (2023), 45-46
2. Jack Spicer, Language, translated by V. Mele (Rome: Tic Edizioni, 2023)

Dr Federica Coluzzi 

Associate Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick

Dr. Federica Coluzzi (BA, MA Sapienza University of Rome) recently completed her Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of Warwick, specializing in Italian literature, gender studies, and digital humanities. Prior to that she was an IRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Cork (2019-2020). She was Early Career Research Fellow at the John Rylands Research Institute and received her PhD in English and American Studies from the University of Manchester. Her research illuminates the literary and social history of women as readers, consumers and promoters of Dante’s reception in the long nineteenth century. She is the chief-editor of the Modern Beatrices Archive and the curator of Eredi di Beatrice: Come le scrittrici italiane hanno letto, interpretato e raccontato Dante fra Otto e Novecento (1830-1921). She is the author of Dante Beyond Influence: Rethinking Reception in Literary Culture (Manchester University Press, 2021), and co-editor of The Afterlife of Dante’s Vita Nova in the Anglophone World with Jacob Blakesley (Routledge 2022). Her work is published in Dante Studies, Bibliotheca Dantesca, Tre Corone, Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing, Nineteenth Century Prose, Studium, CoSMO and Strumenti Critici e La Bibliofilia.

Research interests

• Dante Reception Studies
• Transnational Women’s Writing (1750s-1920s)
• History of the Book, Publishing and Reading (1750s-1920s)
• Digital Humanities

Publications

Books

2021 Dante beyond Influence: Rethinking Reception in Victorian Literary Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 256 pp. ISBN: 9781526152442

Reviews: Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies; L'Alighieri: Rassegna Dantesca; Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies; Il Sole 24 Ore

Edited volumes

2022 With Jacob Blakesley, The Afterlife of Dante's Vita Nova in the Anglophone World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Translation and Reception History. London: Routledge. ISBN: 9781032021065

Reviewed in: L'Alighieri: Rassegna Dantesca

Special issues

2027 With Valentina Mele, "Framing the Female Reader(s): Postures, Gestures and Places of Dante's Transnational Female Public", Comparative Critical Studies (in preparation)

2024 With Tristan Kay, "Looking Back to Look Forward: for a Cultural History of Dante Centenaries (1865-Present)",Bibliotheca Dantesca: A Journal of Dante Studies, 6 (online open-access)

2022 With David Bowe, "Mediating Dante", Italian Studies, 77.2

Peer-reviewed articles and chapters

Under review

• 'Patterns and Practices in Women's Translation History: Distantly Reading the Modern Beatrices Archive', Women's Writing, 2026
• '"An Attitude of the Mind". Women's Scholarly Identity from: the case of Dorothy L. Sayers and Eleanor F. Jourdain', Dante Studies, 2026
• 'Tracing Italian Family History through Material Culture: Eugenia Levi's Dante Calendars', for Journal of Material Culture, 2027

Forthcoming

2026 'Women Poets, Material Culture, and the Resurrection of Italian Authorities in Transatlantic Literary Culture', The Italianist

2026 'The Feel of Freedom: Material Paths of Empowerment in Women's Readings of Dante', Routledge Companion to Global Dante. London: Routledge

2025 'Learning beyond Beauty: Women readers in Marie Spartali Stillman's Paintings', in Forgotten Sisters: Overlooked Pre-Raphaelite Women, ed. by Serena Townbridge and Alex Round. Delaware University Press

2025 With N. Havely, '"An English Classic": The Making of the Anglophone Commedia (1700-1900)', in The Divine Comedy in Translation, ed. by Federica Pich and Theodore Catchey. Notre Dame University Press

In print

2024 'Dante versus Beatrice: Feminist Approaches to the 1865-1890 Centenaries', Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies, 6 (online open-access)

2024 With T. Kay, 'Looking Back to Look Forward: Dante Centenaries, Then and Now', Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies, 6 (online open-access)

2023 'From one to many: Women as Owners and Collectors of Dante in Britain', La Bibliofilía, cxxv, 2023/4

2023 'Becoming Lecturer: Women's Patronage of Dante Studies between Literary Modernism and Historical Modernity', Rivista Studium, 1/2023, pp. 57-72. ISBN 978-88-382-5288-4

2023 'Chapter XXXV', in The Vita Nuova: A Collaborative Reading, ed. by Zygmunt G. Baransky and Heather Webb. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 322-329. ISBN: 9780268207397

2022 'Dorothy L. Sayers and Feminist Archival Historiography in Dante Studies: Female Authorship in Fin de Siècle Britain', CoSMo: Comparative Studies in Modernism, 2/2022, pp. 213-229 (online open-access)

2022 'Illuminating the Vita Nuova: Phoebe Anna Traquair, Evelyn Paul, and Medievalist Practices of Visual Mediation', Italian Studies, 77.2, pp. 190-201 (open access)

2022 With D. Bowe, 'Dante as Mediator and Dante's Mediators', Italian Studies, 77.2, pp. 131-134

2022 'Rediscovering Matthew Arnold: The Commonplace Reader (of Dante)', Nineteenth-Century Prose, 49.1, pp. 113-136

2022 'The Vita nova in the Victorian Fin de Siècle: Translations, Editions and Commentary, 1893-1906', in The Anglophone World Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Translation and Reception History, ed. by Federica Coluzzi and Jacob Blakesley. London: Routledge, pp. 121-137. ISBN 978-1-0320-2106-5

2022 With J. Blakesley, 'The Anglophone Vita Nuova: Translators and Readers', in The Anglophone World Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Translation and Reception History, ed. by Federica Coluzzi and Jacob Blakesley. London: Routledge, pp. 1-23. ISBN 978-1-0320-2106-5

2022 "Dante negli Archivi: Storia Transnazionale delle Società Dantesche di Secondo Ottocento", in La mondializzazione di Dante I: Europa - Actes du Colloque international (Nancy, 15-16 Octobre 2020). Ravenna: Longo Editore, pp. 233-252. ISBN 88-9350-109-0

2021 'Rossetti Reconsidered: Dante's Vita Nuova and its Paths to Canonization in Victorian Literary Culture', Tre Corone: Rivista Internazionale di Studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, VIII, pp. 135-146

2021 "Three Dante Societies: Historical Notes", in Dante Beyond Borders: Contexts and Reception, ed. by Nick Havely and Jonathan Katz with Richard Cooper. Italian Perspectives, 52. Cambridge: Legenda, pp. xxvi-xxviii. EISBN 978-1-78188-838-4

2019 'Dante in the Lecture Room: For a (Social) History of Teaching Dante in Nineteenth-century Britain', Dante Studies, 137, pp. 138-150

2019 'In the Mirror of Childhood: The Wondrous Discovery of Dante's Commedia in Victorian juvenile Adaptations', Rivista Studium, 115.4, pp. 514-528. ISBN 978-88-382-4803-0

2017 'Preaching and Teaching Dante for the Victorian Mass Public: Philip H. Wicksteed's Marginal Dantism', Strumenti critici, Rivista quadrimestrale di cultura e critica letteraria, 2/2017, pp. 253-278. DOI: 10.1419/87011

Dr Leyla M. G. Livraghi is currently Cultore della materia in Italian Philology at the University of Pisa and a member of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland (CDSI).

She has been a Research Fellow in Italian Philology at the University of Pisa (2022–2025); an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Cork (2021–2022); a Postdoctoral Fellow in the project Hypermedia Dante Network at the University of Pisa (2020–2021); a collaborator on the Bibliografia Dantesca Internazionale with the Società Dantesca Italiana (2019–2020); a DAAD Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Frankfurt (2019); and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Fribourg. She obtained her Ph.D in Italian Philology from the University of Pisa in 2018, having undertaken research periods at the University of Cambridge and the University of Notre Dame (IN). In November–December 2025 she will hold the Sassoon Visiting Fellowship at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. In addition to being a member of the CDSI, she serves on the board of the Laboratorio Ipermediale Dantesco, and is also a member of the Dante Group of the Associazione degli Italianisti, the Centro Studi su Benvenuto da Imola, and the Società Dantesca Italiana.

Her research interests focus on the transmission and transformation of Latin culture and texts from the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance; Dante and the early commentators on the Commedia (particularly Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola); medieval Italian lyric poetry (especially Cino da Pistoia); Neoclassical art and literature (Ugo Foscolo); the classical legacy and manuscript tradition of Giovanni Pascoli’s Poemi Conviviali; and the application of digital tools and resources in the Humanities.

Publications

• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Omero nelle Esposizioni: erudizione e riscrittura’, forthcoming in Heliotropia(2025), in the proceedings of the conference ‘Das Spätwerk Boccaccios: Le Esposizioni sopra la Comedia’, Göttingen, Oct. 2023
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Boccaccio “dantista” e il suo pubblico: l’Esposizione a Inferno 8 tra scorci biografici e digressioni mitologiche’, in Heliotropia 21 (2024), pp. 239-273 (issue titled: ‘Lecturae Dantis Boccaccii. Lettura sopra la Comedia’, ed. Sabrina Ferrara and Franziska Meier)
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Qua’ son le cose vostre ch’io vi tolgo — e la polemica anti-cavalcantina prima e dopo Cino’, in Italianistica 53, 2 (2024), pp. 13-31
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Riprese classiche e cultura enciclopedica in Dante: i riferimenti ai serpenti libici e alla fenice in Inferno XXIV’, in ‘Letteratura e arte. Per Marcello Ciccuto’, ed. Pasquale Sabbatino (Pisa: ETS, 2024), pp. 287-298
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘«Il lungo studio e ’l grande amore» ( I, 83). Fonti classiche e strutture compositive dell’opera dantescaʼ (Firenze: Cesati, 2023, repr. 2024)
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘«Mirabiliter extollit Homerus». Su alcuni riferimenti omerici nel Comentum di Benvenuto da Imola’, in ‘«Curiosissimus inquisitor». Nuovi studi su Benvenuto da Imola’, ed. Giuseppina Brunetti, Marco Petoletti and Luca Carlo Rossi (Ravenna: Longo, 2023), pp. 147-172
• Livraghi, Leyla, Zaccarello, Michelangelo, ‘Concettualizzare l’intertestualità del poema dantesco. Un nuovo approccio semantico alle fonti’, in ‘Fortune del Medioevo. Studi di Medievalismo’, ed. Roberta Capelli (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2023), pp. 189-204
• Livraghi, Leyla, Tomazzoli, Gaia (eds.), ‘«Per intelletto umano e per autoritadi». Il contesto di formazione e diffusione culturale del poema dantesco’ (Firenze: Cesati, 2022)
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Francesca altera Dido. Il libro VI dell’Eneide e la costruzione narrativa di InfernoV’, in ‘«Per intelletto umano / e per autoritadi». Il contesto di formazione e diffusione culturale del poema dantesco’, ed. Leyla M.G. Livraghi and Gaia Tomazzoli (Firenze: Cesati, 2022), pp. 111-125
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘L’ontologia di Hypermedia Dante Network (HDN) alla prova del Comentum di Benvenuto da Imola’, in Chroniques italiennes 43, 2 (2022), pp. 207-232
• Bartalesi, Valentina, Pratelli, Nicolò, Meghini, Carlo, Metilli, Daniele, Tomazzoli, Gaia, Livraghi, Leyla, Zaccarello, Michelangelo, ‘A formal representation of the divine comedyʼs primary sources: The Hypermedia Dante Network ontologyʼ, in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 37, 3 (2021), pp. 630-643
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Vanni Fucci e Capaneo: metamorfosi dell’eroe sacrilego dall’epos classico alla Commediaʼ, in Annali d’Italianistica 39 (2021), pp. 149-166 (issue titled: ‘Dante 2021: Unholy and Holy Violence, Silence, Names, Words’)
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Composizione in progressdella Commedia e rapporto con le fonti: il caso rivelatore di Stazio’, in Italianistica 50, 1 (2021), pp. 75-85 (ed. Giorgio Masi)
• Guerin, Philippe, Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Regards croisés sur Dante,Enfer V: amants exemplaires, pragmatique de la liste et interprétation de la tradition’, in ‘Entre les choses et les mots (2): les listes médiévales’, ed. Olivier Biaggini and Philippe Guerin (Paris: Parution, 2021), pp. 127-151
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘De vulgari eloquentiaII vi, 7: un canone della prosa?’, in ‘La cultura di Dante’, ed. Giovanni Vedovotto and Fabio Zanin (Treviso: B#S Edizioni, 2021), pp. 13-44
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Il Livio di Danteʼ, in ‘«Nostra maggior musa». I maestri della letteratura classica nella Commedia di Dante’, ed. John Butcher (Città di Castello: Edizioni Nuova Prhomos, 2021), pp. 99-114
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Dante, Cino, i Malaspina: note sparse di un dialogo poetico e politico’, in ‘Dante e la Toscana occidentale: tra Lucca e Sarzana (1306-1308)’, ed. Alberto Casadei and Paolo Pontari (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2020), pp. 517-524
• Ciccuto, Marcello, Livraghi, Leyla (eds.), ‘Dante visualizzato. Carte ridenti II: XV secolo. Prima parte’ (Firenze: Cesati, 2019)
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Dal Convivioalla Monarchia. Quale Livio per Dante?’, in L’Alighieri 53, 1 (2019), pp. 53-75
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Due usi di Ovidio a confronto in Cino da Pistoia lirico (Se mai leggesti versi de l’Ovidi & Amor, che viene armato a doppio dardo)’, in Arzanà (2019), pp. 9-22
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘«Livïo [...] che non erra» (InfernoXXVIII 12): delimitazione di un’area di pertinenza’, in ‘Lectura Dantis Lupiensis, vol. 5 - 2016’, ed. Valter L. Puccetti and Valerio Marucci (Bologna: Longo, 2018), pp. 63-93
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘«Ché due nature mai a fronte a fronte». Strategie dell’aemulatio dantesca nella bolgia dei ladri’, in Dante 15 (2018), pp. 55-66
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘I riferimenti danteschi a Livio dal Convivioalla Monarchia’, in ‘Sulle tracce del Dante minore: prospettive di ricerca per lo studio delle fonti dantesche’, ed. Thomas Persico and Riccardo Viel (Bergamo: Sestante edizioni, 2017), pp. 45-62
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Esemplarità del mito e agone con gli antichi in XXIV-XXV’, in ‘Dante e i classici’, ed. Marcello Ciccuto and Paola Allegretti (Firenze: Le lettere, 2017), pp. 57-88
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Il motivo della donna nero-velata in Cino ed epigoni’, in ‘Cino da Pistoia nella storia della poesia italiana’, ed. Rossend Arqués Corominas and Silvia Tranfaglia (Firenze: Cesati, 2016), pp. 185-207
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Eros e dottrina nel sonetto dantesco Io sono stato con Amore insieme’, in ‘AlmaDante 2013’, ed. Giuseppe Ledda (Bologna: Aspasia, 2014), pp. 69-87
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Raptuse Deificatio ovidiani nel sistema della Commedia’, in ‘Ortodoxía y heterodoxía en Dante Alighieri. Para una valorización histórica de los orígenes ideológicos de la Modernidad’, ed. Carlota Cattermole, Celia de Aldama and Chiara Giordano, intr. Juan Varela-Portas de Orduña (Madrid: Ediciones de la Discreta, 2014), pp. 691-709
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Attardati, epigoni, “liquidatori”: passaggi di testi fra Cino da Pistoia, Dino Frescobaldi e Sennuccio del Bene’, in Italianistica 42, 1 (2013), pp. 69-89
• Livraghi, Leyla, ‘Dante (e Cino) 1302-1306’, in Tenzone13 (2012), pp. 49-92

Dr Dario Galassini

Affiliation: Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland

Dario graduated from the Università di Bologna (BA 2017, MA 2020) with two theses on Dante Studies supervised by Prof. Giuseppe Ledda and at the Conservatorio di Musica di Bologna (additional BA 2021). In March 2025, he was awarded a PhD in Italian at University College Cork. His research project, entitled ‘Poeta che mi guidi’: Dantean Afterlives in the Poetry of Giorgio Caproni, Antonia Pozzi, Vittorio Sereni, and Mario Luzi, was supervised by Dr Daragh O’Connell and received funding from the Departmental ‘Eduardo Saccone’ Scholarship (2020/2021) and from the Irish Research Council (2021/2022 to 2023/2024). As an official member of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland, based at UCC, he co-curated the Online Exhibition La Commedia Divina: 100 lithographs by Liam Ó Broin and also organised and mediated a series of Dante Dialogues on the topic of Dante and our Modern era. He has published on Giorgio Caproni and new Dante brandings, and he has presented his research in from of many international audiences.

Research interests: Dante Studies; Reception Studies; contemporary Italian poetry

Publications:

Dario Galassini, ‘«Tedua nella selva oscura»: l’album La Divina Commedia e Dante’, in Dante Ibrido, ed. by E. Caponetti, D. Galassini, G. Ledda, D. O’Connell (Florence: Cesati, forthcoming 2026).

Dario Galassini, ‘Variazioni narrative e allegoriche sulla selva dantesca nell’opera di Giorgio Caproni’, Tenzone, 22 (2023), https://doi.org/10.26034/fr.tenzone.2023.4115.

Dario Galassini, ‘«Celebrating 700 anni di Dante»: A New Branding’, Perspectives Médiévales, 44 (2023), https://doi.org/10.4000/peme.49319.

Dario Galassini, ‘La selva, le fiere, la guida: memorie dantesche di Inferno I nella poesia di Giorgio Caproni’, L’Alighieri. Rassegna Dantesca, 56 (2021), pp. 55-71.

Elsina Caponetti

Affiliation: University College Cork

Elsina Caponetti is a current PhD Student in the Department of Italian at University College Cork. Her research project, entitled ‘Mirabilis visio’: Dante’s “Commedia” and Irish Vision Literature, is supervised by Dr Daragh O’Connell and examines the representation of corporeality and space in Dante’s Commedia and in medieval Irish visions. Her research has received funding from the Department of Italian, UCC (Eduardo Saccone PhD Scholarship, 2021-2022), and from the Irish Research Council-Research Ireland (Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, 2022-2025).

Elsina received her BA in Humanities–European Literary Cultures from the Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna and her Licence en Lettres from the Université de Haute-Alsace in 2018. She received her MA in Italian Studies from the Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna in 2021.

At UCC, she has been teaching Italian language and literature to undergraduate students and co-organising Dante-related conferences and events aimed at connecting the Dante community in Ireland, the UK and beyond. She co-organised the series Dante Futures: New Voices in the UK and Ireland Conference (2022, 2023, 2024), the UCC Annual Graduate Conference in Italian Studies (2023), and the study say Envisioning the Afterlife: Dante’s “Commedia” and Irish Visionary Literature” (20 May 2024), in collaboration with Dr Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė.

Research interests

Italian Studies, Dante Studies, Medieval Italian Literature, Medieval Visionary Literature, Corporeality, Early and Medieval Irish Literature, Medieval Religious Culture.

Publications

Book Chapters, Edited Books, Peer-reviewed Articles:

• Elsina Caponetti, Il pozzo dell’inferno tra Dante e la letteratura delle ‘visiones’ medievali,in Dante e lo spazio. Luoghi reali e ideali nella vita e nell’opera dantesca, a cura di D. O’Connell, M. Ottaviani (Firenze: Cesati, 2024), 55–62.
• Elsina Caponetti, «S’i’ fossi di piombato vetro»: per una rilettura della telepatia di Virgilio nella “Commedia”, in «L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca», 64 (2024), 55-78. ISBN: 978-88-9350-155-2.
• Elsina Caponetti, Raccontare l’aldilà nell’aldiquà: il corpo del visionario come testimonio di autenticità nelle ‘visiones’ medievali e nella “Commedia”, in Dante ibrido, a cura di E. Caponetti, D. Galassini, G. Ledda, D. O’Connell (Firenze: Cesati, forthcoming).

Reviews:

• Review of Anne C. Leone, Dante’s Blood(Cambridge, Modern Humanities Research Association-Legenda, 2023), in «L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca», 63 (2024), 144–47.
• Review of Heather Webb, Dante, Artist of Gesture(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), in «L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca», 62 (2023), 141–44. 
• Review of Aggiornamenti sulla Commedia, a cura di V. Giannantonio, A. Sorella (Ravenna, Longo, 2021), in «L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca», 59 (2022), 143–46. 

Chiara Valcelli

Affiliation: University College Cork

Chiara Valcelli is currently a PhD student at University College Cork in the Italian and English Department. Her research focuses on Dante and Joyce, exploring the intersections between corporeality and language in their works. She holds a BA in Italian Literature from the University of Perugia and an MA in Teaching Italian as a Second Language from the Università per Stranieri di Perugia. She is a member of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland and the James Joyce Italian Foundation, and has published and presented on both authors at national and international conferences.

 Research interests

• Dante studies
• Italian literature
• James Joyce and modernism
• Comparative literature
• Corporeality and language

Publications

Peer-reviewed

1. Valcelli, Chiara. “Il Cammino di Dante in Umbria: Seguire i Passi di Dante inParadiso ” In Turismi Danteschi: Itinerari, esperienze, progetti, edited by Giovanni Capecchi and Roberto Mosena, 121–133. Perugia: Perugia Stranieri University Press, 2024.
2. Valcelli, Chiara. “Memory’s Echoes in Dreams: Dante’sPurgatorio and Joyce’s Epiphanies.” In Joyce Studies in Italy, no. 25, edited by Fabio Luppi and Serenella Zanotti, 201–215. Rome: Editoriale Anicia, 2023.
3. Valcelli, Chiara. “Influences of Dante’sPurgatorio in Joyce’s Ulysses: A Pilgrimage of Redemption.” In Joyce Studies in Italy, no. 24, edited by Serenella Zanotti, 155–168. Rome: Editoriale Anicia, 2022.
4. Valcelli, Chiara. “Joyce’s Infernal Dublin in Childhood and Maturity.” InJoyce Studies in Italy, no. 23, edited by Roberto Baronti Marchiò, 179–191. Rome: Editoriale Anicia, 2021.

Book reviews

1. Valcelli, Chiara. Review ofJames Joyce’s Legacies in Contemporary Irish Women’s Writing by Annalisa Mastronardi. In Joyce Studies in Italy, vol. 27, edited by Ilaria Natali and Arianna Antonielli. Rome: Editoriale Anicia, 2025.
2. Valcelli, Chiara. Review ofJames Joyce and Classical Modernism by Leah Culligan Flack. In Joyce Studies in Italy, vol. 26, edited by Sabrina Alonso and William Brockman. Rome: Editoriale Anicia, 2024.

Public engagement

Valcelli, Chiara. “How Dante’s Work Deeply Influenced James Joyce’s Literary Journey.” RTÉ Brainstorm, June 16, 2025. https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/0616/1518605-james-joyce-dante-ulysses-divine-comedy/.

Elisa Rosati

PhD student, University College Cork

Elisa Rosati (she/her) obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Literature from the University of Bologna, where she also completed her Master’s degree in Philology, Literature, and Classical Tradition. She earned her master’s degree with a dissertation supervised by Professor Giuseppe Ledda in Dantean Literature and Philology, which focused on Rachel’s role in Dante’s Commedia. She is currently a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at University College Cork (UCC), under the supervision of Professor Daragh O’Connell. Her doctoral project at UCC, entitled ‘Vertical Dante: The Descensus Christi ad Inferos and the Ascent of the Ladder in the Commedia’, aims to analyze the presence of two key themes in Dante’s poem: Christ’s descent into Hell and the motif of the ladder, understood as microcosms of verticality within the Commedia.

Research interests:

• Dante Studies
• Medieval Italian Literature
• Structural and Symbolic Vertical Movement in Dante’s Commedia: Patterns of Ascent and Descent
• Medieval Latin Literature
• Dante and the Bible
• Dante and the Classics
• Metaliterary Aspects in Dante

Publications: 

Visum principium e figura Ecclesiae. La presenza di Rachele nella Commedia, L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca (October 2025).