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What do you teach at Ca’ Foscari? What are your main research interests? 
I teach History of Japanese Art. My main research interests concern ukiyoe prints and paintings (images of the "Floating World") of the Edo period (1600-1868), Japanese art in Italian public and private collections, the phenomenon of Japanism and recently my interest has shifted towards contemporary Japanese art.
My academic career started with a degree in Oriental Languages and Literature at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. After being awarded a scholarship, I completed a Master's degree in Art & Archaeology (China, Korea, Japan) at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in London, then a PhD in East Asian Art History at the University of Genoa. During this specialisation period I attended courses in Japanese Art History at the Gakushūin University (Imperial University) in Tokyo for a year and a half, with seminars in public and private collections in Los Angeles, California.

What led you to pursue a research career? What are you most passionate about in your field of study?
What led me to pursue research was certainly my curiosity about "the different". After largely Eurocentric studies, my interest in aesthetics in general and specifically Japanese aesthetics stimulated my desire to understand phenomena that are apparently contradictory but interesting for this very reason.

What does teaching at the university mean to you?
For me, teaching at university is a way of getting to know an individual. Whatever their subject or field of interest, I try to stimulate unknown skills, perhaps even unknown to the very student, in order to enhance the talent that each one possesses. Art history is almost an excuse and certainly a way to try to approach the world of Beauty with your own tools and methods.

You work in a department dealing with non-European worlds: what does working on cultural diversity mean to you in an increasingly interconnected world?
Being part of a department that works with non-European contexts means having to deal with cultures that are often very different from our own. For me, this has always been a great opportunity to listen and suspend any judgement, above all. Learning day by day that different paths, sometimes apparently conflicting, are all designed to pursue the same universal values that make up the Human Being as a whole, regardless of cultural, religious or linguistic affiliations. In an increasingly interconnected world, acknowledging that we all belong to the same "human race" will help us understand each other better and engage in more meaningful dialogue.