Olga Campofreda teaches Italian language, culture and translation at the School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) at UCL. In 2021 (Term 2) she was Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies (UCL) where she delivered the talk Reading Little Women After The Seventies. Since 2018, she has been involved in the organising committee of the Festival of Italian Literature in London (FILL).
She gained her PhD in Italian Studies from University College London with a thesis on the representation of youth as a form of cultural engagement in the writings of Pier Vittorio Tondelli. The research was published in 2020 as a monograph titled Dalla Generazione all’Individuo. Giovinezza, identità, impegno nell’opera di Pier Vittorio Tondelli (Mimesis, 2020).
As a scholar, her work mainly focuses on contemporary Italian literature with a special angle on youth and the coming-of-age novel (Bildungsroman). Youth cultures, counterculture, women’s studies and gender studies are within her main research areas. Among other publications, the article Young Writers: Anthologies as an Instrument to Discuss Italian Youth was included in the special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies (January 2018).
Her postdoctoral project titled The Making of Italian Women (1930s-2010s) aims to investigate to what extent the feminist struggle for women’s rights influenced the structure of female coming-of-age novels. Exploring the subject of girlhood and female Bildungsroman, Dr Campofreda is also co-editing a special issue of the academic journal altrelettere titled Italian Girlhoods and Other Brilliand Friends (forthcoming).
