I obtained a PhD in English Literature from the University of Huddersfield in July 2023. I was under the supervision of Professor Heather Clark.
I was the recipient of: The University of Huddersfield’s Contemporary Poets Project Scholarship 2019, 2020 and 2021; the Santander Research Support and Travel Fund 2021; The Ted Hughes Conference Bursary 2022 (The Ted Hughes Society), The Glyn Hambrook Postgraduate Research Award 2022 (British Comparative Literature Association) and The BAAS 2023 Conference PGR/ECA Travel Bursary.
My research project 'Sylvia Plath's Transnational Identity' aims at understanding the complex relationship between Sylvia Plath and her adoptive country. This aspect of her life has been neglected in academia and I believe studying Plath’s identity as a foreigner in England, an outsider in her own country, a woman in a mixed marriage, and a writer with personal and intellectual connections with Europe would shed a new light on her writing.
Her case demonstrates that living abroad can be a personal journey to discover oneself, that it is not contradictory to love and hate a country at the same time, and that having a double or triple identity is not incompatible. I find this project particularly relevant in these days of national identity crises.
In 2021 and 2022, I worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Huddersfield. I designed and developed teaching materials (quizzes, videos, handouts, recorded lectures) for the courses AFE1209-2122: Literary Genres and APR0085-2122 Twentieth Century Poetry (undergraduate level)
I'm talking about my research in the video below:
Articles
• “Translation as a Way to ‘feel virtuous’: Sylvia Plath’s Translations from French”, Sylvia Plath among Strangers around the World, (Publisher TBC), 2026.
• “‘We’re Strangers Here’: Sylvia Plath and Transnationalism”, The New Plath Studies, Cambridge University Press (UK), 2025 or 2026.
• “Accessibility in the Poetry World: How the Pandemic Transformed the Contemporary British Poetry Scene”, TIES: Revue de literature Textes, Images et Sons (France), 2024.
• “‘An English Totem’: Constructions of Englishness in Max Porter’s Lanny” in David Rudrum and Pawel Wojtas (eds.) (Routledge, 2024).
• “‘I felt I’d come home’: Sylvia Plath and France” in Nicolas Pierre Boileau and Carmen Bonasera (eds.), “The ‘Edge’ of Sylvia Plath’s Critical History: A Reappraisal of Plath’s Work, 60 years after”, Revue Electronique d’Etudes sur le Monde Anglophone (e-Rea), 2023.
• Poem Guide: Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant”, The Poetry Foundation, July 2023.
• “Invenzione e ‘atlantismo’ nella poesia contemporanea in lingua inglese: Julie Irigaray”. Five of my poems were translated by Professor Paolo Luca Bernardini, with an introduction by Professor Laura Orsi, Expressio: Rivista di Linguistica, Letteratura e Comunicazione, Mimesis Edizioni, vol.5 2021 (Italy), pp.273-294.
• Review of Amanda Golden’s Annotating Modernism: Marginalia and Pedagogy from Virginia Woolf to the Confessional Poets (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020) for The Modernist Review, 26th February 2021
Conferences and talks
6th February 2024: “‘What is this country doing to me?’: Immigration, Exile and Exclusion in Irène Némirovsky’s Work”, Literary Dislocation(s) Seminar Series, British Comparative Literature Association (online)
11th-12th October 2023: “The Death of Myth-Making: the literary afterlives of Arthur Rimbaud and Sylvia Plath”, British Comparative Literature Association PG and ECR Conference: Spectres, Spectrums and Spectrality, University of Warwick (UK)
15th-16th June 2023: “Accessibility in the Poetry World: How the Pandemic Transformed the Contemporary British Poetry Scene", Contemporary British Poetry in the Long 1980s: From Deregulation to Self-Regulation, Sorbonne Université / UPEC (France)
22nd May 2023: I'm discussing my research at the BCLA PG Seminar Series: Emerging Voices in Comparative Literature (online)
12th-14th April 2023: "‘I felt I’d come home’: Sylvia Plath and France”, British Association for American Studies Annual Conference 2023, Keele University (UK)
8th February 2023: "Sylvia Plath's Trips to France", After Sylvia event, Lancaster University, 7.30pm - 8.30pm GMT time, online
22nd October 2022: "New Generation Thinkers: Julie Irigaray, Iona Murphy & Dorka Tamás with Kitty Shaw", The Sylvia Plath Literary Festival (Hebden Bridge, UK), 3pm GMT time
7-9th September 2022: my paper "Ted Hughes's Depiction of Spain and France in Birthday Letters" has been accepted for the 9th International Ted Hughes Society Conference taking place at the University of Huddersfield (UK)
8th June 2022: "Writing About Place in Times of Lockdown: Researching Sylvia Plath’s Displacement during the Pandemic", English Literature & Creative Writing Postgraduate Festival of Research, University of Huddersfield (UK)
31st May-3rd June 2022: I am presenting my paper “'An old-fashioned American' with a 'British tempo': Sylvia Plath, England and her Transnational Identity", AFEA conference, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne (France)
20th May 2022: "'We're Strangers Here': Sylvia Plath and Transnationalism", Sylvia Plath and Trans-Atlanticism Symposium, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Fulbright Foundation (Greece)
11th-12th March 2022: I co-organised the Sylvia Plath Across the Century online conference and gave the presentation: "Sylvia Plath as a Student and Reader of French Literature" on 11th March.
20th October 2021: Gave a poetry reading and discussed the Basque language and culture at the Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures and Ecosystems, University of Leeds (UK)
5th June 2021: Presented a paper entitled “‘In Ireland I feel I may find my soul’: Sylvia Plath and Ireland”, The American Conference for Irish Studies 2021 Virtual Conference
24th October 2020: I discussed the tea and sherry parties Sylvia Plath attended upon her arrival in Cambridge and how they helped her getting integrated into British society for the Sylvia Plath Birthday Party organised by the Sylvia Plath Society.
6th June 2020: Presented "'What Made you Stay?': Sylvia Plath, England and Her Transnational Identity", The Sylvia Plath Zoomposium II
Research interests
Transnational literature - English Literature - American Literature - Sylvia Plath - Comparative Literature - French literature - 19th century French poetry - Arthur Rimbaud - 20th century Italian literature - 20th century literature - Romanticism - Women's Studies - Cultural History - Contemporary Poetry
