Dr Paola Cori

• PhD (University of Birmingham)
• Laurea in Lettere e Filosofia (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

I graduated at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. I then completed a PhD on Image and Memory in Leopardi at the University of Birmingham, which was awarded a Giacomo Leopardi Prize for doctoral dissertations form the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani in Recanati. From 2013 to 2016 I was Honorary Research Fellow of the Leopardi Centre at Birmingham, where I organized many international events, also as recipient of two Small Research Grants from the Cesare Barbieri Endowment (Trinity College, Hartford, USA). I have contributed to the Lessico leopardiano project and I collaborate with the Laboratorio Leopardi research network (University of Rome La Sapienza). Before returning to Birmingham as permanent lecturer, I held temporary lectureships at Nottingham Trent and Cardiff University.

I teach across the entire Core provision of the Italian programme and I am the Italian coordinator for Languages for All.

I teach the following modules:

• LI Italian Core III – Intermediate: Icons of Italy (30128), Seminars
• LI Italian Core III – Advanced: Icons of Italy (30218), Communicative Skills and Seminars
• LH Italian Language (29669), Use of Language
• LC Italian Core I – Advanced: Icons of Italy (29746), Use of Language and Communicative Skills
• LC Translation in Practice I (Adv. Italian) (31446)
• Supervisor for ISM Dissertations (Translation Studies related topic and IT04 Italian: Word, Music, Image: Interdisciplinarity and Translation Studies in Italian texts)

I am convenor of the following course:

• LC Translation in Practice I (Adv Italian) (31446)

Giacomo Leopardi
Nineteenth-century Italian literature, philosophy and philosophy of language
The Irrational and the Unconscious before Freud
Literature and science
‘Italian Theory’
Translation studies
Modern foreign language pedagogy

I supervise the following PhD projects:

Sara Corpino, ‘Translation of dialects: Atzeni’s language in English and French’ (co-supervisor with Dr Emma Tyler)
Simona Scanni, ‘Effectiveness of Online Language Learning: A case study of Italian as a foreign language’ (co-supervisor with Dr Paolo De Ventura)

My research specialization is Leopardi and nineteenth-century literature and philosophy. My PhD thesis discussed the relations between memory and image in Leopardi’s Canti and Zibaldone. Since then, and as Honorary Research Fellow of the Leopardi Centre at Birmingham, I have continued to devote my research to Leopardi and nineteenth-century literature and philosophy, while at the same time investigating this period as the matrix of many epistemological questions which would become fully manifest in the Novecento and beyond, and which still inform our contemporary sensitivity. From the perspective of language pedagogy, I am also interested in exploring the way new attention ecology  theories can enhance the theory and practice of second language acquisition.

I am Italian coordinator for the Languages for All programme.