Academic Appointments
2019 – Assistant Professor of African American Studies, UCLA
2018 – 2019: UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow – Anthropology, UC Irvine
2017 – 2018: UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow – Gender & Sexuality Studies, UC Irvine
2016 – 2017: Academic Fellow, Department of Black Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Education
2017: PhD – History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz
Designated emphases in Literature & Feminist Studies
2014: MA (Hons.) – History of Consciousness – UC Santa Cruz
2013: Certificate in Italian Language, Corso di perfezionamento, (CEFR: C1/ILR4)
Alma Mater Studiorium Università di Bologna
2012: Res.Cert. – Italian and Gender & Women’s Studies – UC Berkeley
2011: BA/MA – Russian Philology and Italian Literature (Hons.) – City University of New York
2009: Certificate in Italian Language & Semiotics – Erasmus mundus Programme
Alma Mater Studiorium Università di Bologna
Research Appointments & Fellowships
2019: “On the Matter of Blackness in Europe,” UCHRI Conference Grant
2017: “Queer of Color Formations and Translocal Spaces in Europe” @ UCHRI (Winter)
2016 – 2018: Co-PI for “Queer Italia Network,” £60,000 AHRC (UK) grant
2016 – 2017: Academic Fellow, Department of Black Studies @ UC Santa Barbara
2016 – 2017: “Where Blackness Meets the Sea” funded by Black Studies Consortium
2016 – 2017: Co-PI for Black Studies: Vocabularies and Genealogies @ UCHRI
2015 – 2016: Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Modern Languages Research
— (Centres for Cultural Memory and Women’s Writing), University of London
2015 – 2016: Visiting Researcher, Medieval and Modern Languages, Cambridge
2014 – 2015: Research Assistant for Professor Angela Y. Davis
2013 – 2015: Graduate Student Researcher for Professor Gina Dent
Teaching
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- University of California, Los Angeles
- Fall 2019: Blackness and Indigeneity in Europe
- Winter 2020: Race and Racisms in Fortress Europe
- Winter 2020: Black and Migration Literature
- Other Institutions
- Spring 2017: BLST 191DS – The Black Mediterranean (UC Santa Barbara)
- Summer 2016: CRES 60E – Black Europe (UC Santa Cruz)
- University of California, Los Angeles
Languages
Italian (fluent) — Russian (degree level)
German (intermediate) — Spanish (intermediate)
French (proficient) — Latin (reading)
Arabic (adv. beginner) — Somali (beginner)
Teaching Areas
Black European cultural production & social justice movements, Italophone and East African literature, migration literature, Italian colonialism, Black cultural studies, queer studies, postcolonial feminist theory, literature & the law
Research Interests
Black poetics, dispossession, citizenship, postcoloniality and decoloniality in Europe, cultural memory in the African diaspora, queer aesthetics, the Black Mediterranean, testimony, créolité, and meticciato
