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). Coming out September 2019.

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

Articles

(forthcoming) ‘The Medieval and the Modern in Baudelaire’s “À une passante”’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies.

'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.