Visiting Scholars

AY 2025-2026

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2024-27)

Valentina Mele holds a Ph.D. in Italian Studies and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, where her research is supported by the British Academy. Her work focuses on modernist and postmodernist receptions of Dante, with particular attention to transatlantic literary exchanges and the American poetic avant-garde. She has published in international journals and edited volumes on Dante’s modern afterlives and twentieth-century literary culture.

Dr. Mele is the recipient of a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF 2024) for her project AvantDante – The Reception of Dante in 1945–2001 U.S. Avant-Garde Poetic Communities (2025–2028). The project examines the appropriation, translation, and reinvention of Dante within postwar American experimental poetry. Her research will be conducted at the University of Notre Dame under the supervision of Professor Theodore J. Cachey Jr., and at the Università di Pavia, Department of Humanities.

Gregor Meinecke is a doctoral student of art history at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and the University of Hamburg (Joint PhD). His thesis on “Holy Script and its Bearers in the Image of the Italian Renaissance” maps the appearance, variety and functions of (pseudo-)scripts in paintings of the Italian Renaissance through the lens of the script’s legibility and depicted materiality. Meinecke works as an affiliated researcher at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and received visiting scholarships at the Orientinstitut in Beirut and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Filippo Ungar is a PhD candidate in Texts, Traditions, and Cultures of the Book at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale (Naples, Italy) and in Languages, Literature, and Translation Studies at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium). His doctoral research is devoted to the study and critical edition of the medieval Italian vernacular translations of the Visio Tnugdali, one of the visionary texts that most profoundly shaped the otherworldly imagination of Latin Christianity in the Middle Ages, including Dante’s Commedia. As a visiting scholar Notre Dame, he will collaborate with the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship to design a digital editorial model for these texts and to initiate their encoding according to XML-TEI standards. Among his publications is the recent critical edition Due volgarizzamenti dell’Ars practica mensurabilis cantus secundum Iohannem de Muris (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo per la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 2025).

AY 2024-2025

Marco Rainini is a Professor of Church History at the l’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore where he teaches at the Milan and Brescia campuses. His scholarly work principally deals with symbolic theology and apocalypticism during the 12th and 13th centuries, and focuses on the origins of the Mendicant orders via the study of Joachim of Fiore. Professor Rainini's publications include Disegni dei tempi: Il "Liber Figurarum" e la teologia figurativa di Gioacchino da Fiore (2006), Corrado di Hirsau e il "Dialogus de cruce". Per la ricostruzione del profilo di un autore monastico del XII secolo (2014), and Il profeta del papa. Vita e memoria di Raniero da Ponza eremita di curia (2016). He is the co-editor of several volumes, including L’Ordine dei Predicatori. I Domenicani: storia, figure e istituzioni (1216-2016) and Ordinare il mondo. Diagrammi e simboli nelle pergamene di Vercelli (2018). While at Notre Dame, Professor Rainini will develop a critical edition on Gioacchino da Fiore with the support of the Department of Classics, the Center for Italian Studies, the Medieval Institute, and the Forum for the History of Philosophy.

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Francesco Feriozzi is a Visiting Faculty Member and Scholar from Notre Dame Rome, where he currently holds a post-doctoral research fellowship. He has earned a Master’s Degree in Filologia Moderna at Sapienza and a DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. He is currently working on a project on the canon of Dante’s works from 1300 to 1600 under the supervision of Laura Banella and Ted Cachey. He has also worked on the reception of troubadour poetry in Renaissance Italy and on Giovanni Maria Barbieri’s treatise Arte del rimare of which he has produced a critical edition (forthcoming). His other research interests include troubadour poetry, the survival and reception of Medieval literature in Renaissance Italy, theories of literature and language in 16th century Italy, theory and methods of traditional and authorial philology, and Alessandro Manzoni.

Italian Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Humanities and Social Science

Massimo Vittorio is a Research Professor in Moral Philosophy at the University of Catania, Italy, where he teaches Philosophical Anthropology and Communication Ethics. Over the years he has also taught Social Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, and Political Philosophy, both at undergraduate and graduate levels. He obtained his PhD in Philosophy and History of Ideas with a thesis on Situation Ethics. He is currently Deputy Dean of the Graduate Philosophy School of the University of Catania and member of the board of the PhD program in Sciences of Interpretation. He is Senior Examiner (and past-Chief Examiner), Curriculum Developer and Author for Philosophy at the International Baccalaureate. He is a member of several editorial boards and international research projects, including one on Food Ethics, partnered by Anáhuac University and The Cordon Bleu (Mexico). He is founder and editor-in-chief of the academic journal Etica-mente, which also publishes a philosophical magazine and hosts a webzine, where students and scholars can post philosophical topics. Professor Vittorio has previously held the position of Visiting Scholar and Professor at several universities and research centers, including St. Olaf College and the Hong Kierkegaard Library in Northfield (MN). His research interests focus on contemporary ethics, particularly on the role of technology and emotions in shaping human nature and action, and draws influence from the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Professor Vittorio's most recent research is grounded in Urban Ethics, with a focus on the role of space. A list of his publications can be found on the website of the Institutional Research Information System (IRIS) of Italy.

Past Scholars

Fulbright (2023-24)

Marco Grazzi is a full professor in Economic Policy. He obtained his PhD from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa) and his research has been published in various scientific journals, including Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Industrial Economics, Small Business Economics, Research Policy, and Review of Economics and Statistics. His research interests focus on the role of companies in determining the dynamics observed at the aggregate level of industrial sectors and countries. To achieve this goal, his works address various theoretical and empirical aspects, including international trade, firm growth and innovation, and production analysis. He is involved in various editorial activities, serving as an associate editor for Industrial and Corporate Change and Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, as well as being on the Editorial Review Board for Small Business Economics. He has been a visiting scholar at various foreign universities, including the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Cambridge (UK), and EPFL Lausanne (CH). He has participated in several research projects funded by national institutions (MIUR, banking foundations) and international entities (EU-EC H2020). Links to publications can be found on his website.

Fulbright (2020-21)

Andrea Carteny is an associate professor of the history of Eastern Europe, modern history, and the history of international relations, as well as director of CEMAS (Centro di Ricerca Cooperazione con l’Eurasia, il Mediterraneo e l’Africa Sub-sahariana), an interdepartmental research center, at the Sapienza University of Rome. Carteny received both a Ph.D. in the history of Europe and M.A. in humanities from the Sapienza University of Rome. Carteny's research focuses primarily on the concept of national identity, nationalism, and ethnocentrism, as well as Eurasian History and pan-Turanism. In Spring 2021, he is at Notre Dame, hosted by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, as the recipent of a visiting professorship sponsored by the Italian Fulbright Commission, the Nanovic Institute, the College of Arts and Letters, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Center for Italian Studies.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2023-26)

Giovanna Corazza holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Medieval Italian Literature and Dante Studies from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she pursues her research activity. Her primary interests focus on the forms, sources, and rhetorical elaborations of the geographical knowledge in early Italian literature from the 14th-century to the Renaissance. She has published in international journals including L’Alighieri, Studi Petrarcheschi, Dante Studies, Tenzone.

Dr. Corazza is presently engaged in the GEODETIC-Geography and Cartography in Dante’s Comedy project (2023-2026), supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship under the EU HORIZON Europe for Research and Innovation Programme 2021-2027. The project aims to explore Dante's poem and its unparalleled geographical awareness, offering a groundbreaking perspective on the renewed connection with the environment, characteristic of the urban culture of Dante's era. Dr. Corazza's research will be conducted at Ca’ Foscari University-Department of Humanities, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Padua-Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2019-21)

Matteo Favaretto, Ph.D. holds a Laurea in Classics from the University of Padua, a Ph.D. in Italian literature from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, and a Ph.D. in Italian literature from Royal Holloway, University of London. At Notre Dame, he will be working on a project entitled "Repertorio dei prosimetri in volgare dalle Origini al 1500," funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship. After two years at Notre Dame, Dr. Favaretto will spend a year at Ca' Foscari completing the project.

Past Visiting Ph.D. Students

Catherine Bloomer (Fall 2020)

Catherine Bloomer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Italian and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, where she obtained her M.A. and M.Phil. in Italian literature. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction from The New School and a B.A. in Italian and English literature with a concentration in Creative Writing from Barnard College. As a Research Visitor at the University of Notre Dame, she will focus on her dissertation that treats disability in Dante’s works and times.

Luca Naponiello (Fall 2020)

Luca Naponiello is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Italian and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. His research interests include 20th-century literature with a particular focus on folktales, ecocriticism, and narratology. As a Research Visitor at Notre Dame, he will work on his dissertation, in which he investigates ecological concerns in Italo Calvino’s work and the agency of natural elements in his Fiabe italiane. He studied Modern Philology at the Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, the oldest continually operating university in the world. During his undergraduate career, he spent an academic year at the University of Warwick as an Erasmus fellow. Before moving to the United States, he taught Latin and Italian in several high schools in the Bologna area. He is currently the rapporteur for the Columbia University Seminar in Modern Italian Studies.