About

I grew up in Brussels where I was raised in English and Italian by my parents and went to French-speaking schools. I completed my BA and PhD in Medieval & Modern Languages (French and Italian) at the University of Oxford and arrived at Warwick in 2018 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, to work on French perceptions of Iran in the long nineteenth century under the mentorship of James Hodkinson. Prior to that I was a Laming Fellow at the Queen's College, Oxford, where I remain an honorary fellow. I have also been on exchange programmes at the Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia, Italy, the Johns Hopkins University, and Columbia University.

Research interests

I am most interested in comparative approaches that bring into dialogue texts from different historical periods, languages, and cultures. My main research focus at present is my Leverhulme project, entitled ‘West-Eastern Encounters: Iran in French Literature (1829-1908)’, which looks at the reception of Persian literature and the perception of Iran in French-language literature in the long nineteenth century, including fiction, poetry, essays, travel writing, and drama. The project contributes to wider debates on Orientalism, the cross-cultural circulation of literature, and postcolonial theory.

My other research interests are: Dante, Proust, Gender, Nineteenth-Century French Poetry, and Italian and Persian Medieval Poetry, particularly in comparison.

Books & Edited Volumes

Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy (Legenda).

‘Sa’di at Large', special issue of Iranian Studies journal.

Articles

‘Identifying with the Orient: Exoticism and Similarity in Jean Lahor’s Quatrains d’Al-Ghazali’, ‘Reframing European Exoticism’ issue of MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 14 (2019).

'The Medieval and the Modern in Baudelaire's "À une passante"', Nineteenth-Century French Studies 48: 1 & 2 (2019), 98–113

'Beyond Orientalism: When Desbordes-Valmore Carried Sa'di's Roses to France', Iranian Studies 52 (July 2019).

‘L’analogie chez Dante et Proust’, in ‘Marcel Proust, roman moderne: perspectives comparatistes’, special issue of Marcel Proust Aujourd’hui (2017), 76–86.

‘Is Odette an Artist? Approaching Female Creativity in Proust’s À la recherche’, French Studies, 70.3 (July 2016), 348–61.

‘Reading in Dante and Proust’, Modern Language Notes (Comparative Literature Issue), 130.5 (December 2015), 1130–49.