Claudia Dellacasa

Claudia wrote a PhD in Italian Studies under the supervision of Katrin Wehling-Giorgi and Fusako Innami, and graduated in 2021.

What was your PhD topic?

My PhD investigated the contact between Italian author Italo Calvino and Japanese culture: I analysed the literary and philosophical outcome of an encounter that happened in the late 1970s and entered into dialogue with Calvino’s own trajectory as an intellectual. I am happy to say that the monograph resulting from my PhD, Italo Calvino and Japan: A Journey through the Shallow Depths of Signs (Legenda 2024) was awarded the XXIV International Flaiano Prize in Italian Studies Luca Attanasio in 2025.

What do you do now?

I am lecturer in Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow. This year I run the Italian Book Club at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Edinburgh. I am also on the editorial board of the Italian literary journal La Balena Bianca, for which I write regularly, and I contribute book reviews and opinion pieces for il Tascabile, the online magazine of the Enciclopedia Treccani.

What did you do after leaving Durham? 

Immediately after my viva, I moved to Germany for a Teach@Tübingen postdoctoral fellowship. During that year, I taught modules in Italian and Comparative Literature at Tübingen, as well as in Environmental Humanities at the University of Augsburg. Indeed, my research with time has brought together the decentralisation of Western perspectives – already at the heart of my PhD – and the challenge to anthropocentrism and logocentrism. With a project on what I define “eco-polyphony”, that is the capacity of literature to give form to more-than-human dialogues, I then won a two-year Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship, during which I was based at University College Dublin, between 2022 and 2024. My project was awarded the Maurice J. Bric Medal of Excellence as top-ranked in the domain of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences under the Government of Ireland Funding Programme in 2022. In 2024, I was appointed at Glasgow, where I teach modules on ecology across Italian and Comparative Literature.

How did the research environment at Durham help you develop your thinking? (e.g. did you participate in research groups, centres, institutes, or other research events?)

At Durham, I was part of the Centre for Culture and Ecology, which especially in the last years of my PhD was key in guiding me towards environmental research questions. I co-convened the CCE reading group for two years, which was a great opportunity for discussion, and I benefitted very much from the weekly seminars that virtually brought to Durham – in particular during the early months of the pandemic – some of the most prominent and inspiring scholars in Environmental Humanities from the UK and beyond. I followed the model of the CCE when I convened the Environmental Humanities research strand’s reading group at UCD, and I am currently in the process of establishing a similar research group at Glasgow, since I know from my experience at Durham how formative and productive such an endeavour is, both for me and others.

How did your PhD studies prepare you for what you do now? 

At Durham, I not only had the best time conducting research and discussing ideas with my supervisors, colleagues, and friends, but I was also given the opportunity to teach both literature and language classes at different points. This was extremely beneficial for the experiences I went on to do in Germany and Ireland, as the complementarity of research and teaching was at the root of my successful applications – including the one that brought me to land a permanent academic job in Glasgow only two years after my viva (I was appointed at Glasgow in 2023, but managed to complete my IRC fellowship first and officially started in 2024).

What is your favourite memory of Durham? 

The very first time I saw the cathedral is a moment I will never forget. I was on the bus from the airport, having landed in the UK for my first experience of study abroad – I should have mentioned that I first came to Durham as an Erasmus student from La Sapienza University of Rome, in 2015. My luggage was stranded somewhere in Europe and I was overwhelmed by new sensations and some worry. When the bus came down from Gilesgate and the cathedral appeared, there was a spontaneous chorus of quiet wonder among all of us. That sight filled me with awe and calmed me down. I keep feeling a bit of the same wonder and calm whenever I’m back in Durham and I see that place, which is really magic for me.

Read more on Claudia’s University of Glasgow and academia.edu profiles.