Research

Adaptation between Language and Corporeality

The research group aims to study the interactions between language and corporeality in the expression of poetic language, writing, and theatre, from the ancient world to the contemporary. The theoretical perspective, structurally interdisciplinary, within which the phenomenon is studied draws on semiology, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and interpretive anthropology.

Coordinator: Massimo Stella
Members: Giulia Delogu, Cristina Fossaluzza, Simone Francescato, Alessandro Mistrorigo, Filomena Mitrano

Intra- and Intermedial Adaptations of European and American Literary Texts and Models in the 19th and 20th Centuries

The research group will focus on studying the multiple forms of intra- and intermedial adaptation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and North American literary texts and models, examining cases of explicit or implicit intertextuality (in the form of rewritings, parodies, translations, quotations, allusions, etc.) and of cinematic or narrative-visual transposition (graphic novel). The group will organise, individually and/or collectively, seminars, conferences, and study days involving Italian and international colleagues, with the aim of strengthening collaborations in view of possible publications on the topic.

Coordinator: Simone Francescato
Members: Massimo Ciaravolo, Alessandro Farsetti, Ashley Merrill Riggs, Stefania Sbarra, Emma Sdegno, Julien Zanetta
PhD student: Felicita Gelmini

Adaptations, Circulations, Innovations: European Drama in the Early Modern Period

The aim of the project is to investigate the multiple strands of the early modern European dramatic tradition in all their variety, difference, and complexity. In doing so, it is important to subject the conventions of thematic adaptations and the aesthetic norms that determine them to comparative study. The uniqueness, originality, and innovative force of many dramatic works are not fully appreciated when adaptations of the Commedia dell'arte, Shakespeare, and the great Spanish and French playwrights are cited as an exclusive aesthetic reference point. Equally inadequate, in our view, is evaluating the dramatic productions of the early modern period against the Aristotelian standards inherited from antiquity and established during the classicist period. Many authors, particularly in Latin and German dramaturgy, did not regard the genre standards of antiquity as exemplary at all, and therefore proceeded freely and in a 'hybrid' manner in the writing of their plays. Of great interest, therefore, is the emergence of hybrid dramatic forms. The key questions concern when and where they arose, through which adaptations of ancient and contemporary European genre models and character types, and against which norms they should be evaluated in their respective historical contexts. Also to be examined are the protean characters appearing across various types of drama, the mixing of secular and sacred forms, materials, and motifs, and the persistence or transformation of rhetorical models, topoi, genre norms, plots, and character constellations.

Coordinator: Claus Kurt Zittel
Members: Magda Campanini, Cristina Fossaluzza, Maria Del Valle Ojeda Calvo, Adrian J. Sáez Garcia, Massimo Stella

Intra- and interlinguistic, intercultural, and intermodal adaptation from synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and the training of adapters, translators, and language mediators

Building on my HITRADE [FRA] research project, which compiles Jean Delisle’s archive on the history of translation, Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa, and presents material on the history of translation and the role of language mediators, this interdisciplinary research group aims to study intra- and interlinguistic, intercultural, and cross-modal adaptation from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, following a series of analytical strands:

1. the training of linguistic and cultural adapters—such as language mediators, translators, interpreters, audiovisual translators, transcreators, and dialogue writers—who use different languages, including those expressed through various modes of communication (acoustic-vocal, visual-manual, tactile)
2. collaboration among the various cultural agents responsible for adaptation activities, with particular attention to the challenges and advantages posed by technological tools and artificial intelligence
3. the role of language mediators as cross-cultural agents during periods of cultural and/or technological transition
4. the history of linguistic and cultural adaptation: drawing on the experience of the HITRADE translation history archive, we aim to create a new website to collect memories, testimonies, and stories of adaptations from a diachronic, cross-disciplinary perspective.

We have entered into an agreement with the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Mediation [ITA] (University of Milan) for research on the history of translation.

Coordinator: Mirella Agorni
Members: Giuseppe De Bonis, Maria Elisa Fina, Marie Christine Jamet, Lara Mantovan, Linda Rossato, Graziano Serragiotto, Giuseppe Sofo, Giuseppe Trovato, Federico Zanettin
PhD students: Giulia Cavalli, Viviana Mauro, Pietro Rigo

Adapting Learning Environments to the Challenges of Language Education and Language Teacher Training

This research group focuses on:

• adapting teaching methods to promote pluralistic and integrated approaches, multiliteracies models, and inclusion models for students of various age groups (from children to adults), in line with the current challenges of multilingual and multicultural language education (L2, LS, minority languages, classical languages, etc.);
• adapting training programs for teacher professional development (initial and in-service) to address the need to promote linguistic, cultural, and intercultural, methodological, organizational, digital, and socio-emotional knowledge and skills, etc., in line with the themes of the 2030 Agenda to improve the quality of education and the well-being of individuals;
• adaptation of research methods and processes to address pedagogical, linguistic, and intercultural challenges (immigration, multilingualism, special educational needs, technological advancement, etc.).

Coordinator: Graziano Serragiotto
Members: Monica Banzato, Shaul Bassi, Fabio Caon,  Maria Elisa Fina, Yannick Hamon, Marie Christine Jamet, Marcella Menegale, Maria Cecilia Luise, Giuseppe Trovato
PhD students: Giorgia Fattori, Tiziana Lorenzet, Silvia Scolaro, Federico Trentanove

Adaptation of Classics for Children / Rewritings of Myths

This research group is organized into two thematically intertwined subgroups, each with its own specific focus. The first subgroup will analyze literary, artistic, and musical adaptations of classics from both the adult and children's canons of European and American literature. This research particularly focuses on contemporary Children's and Young Adult (YA) production, drawing on the perspectives of Adaptation Studies—including from a language-teaching standpoint. The second subgroup will focus on the rewriting and adaptation of fairy tales, novellas, and mythic narratives within the European tradition, exploring how these genres interact from an interdisciplinary perspective, from the Renaissance to the present day.
The group collaborates with the  Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo [ITA] (Turin) and Università Suor Orsola Benincasa [ITA] (Naples).

Coordinator: Laura Tosi
Members: Magda Campanini, Margherita Cannavacciuolo, Fabio Caon, Ashley Merrill Riggs,  Adrian J. Sáez Garcia, Massimo Stella, Alessandro Cabiati
PhD student: Carolina Celeste Granini

Adaptation of inguistic Structures to the Context of Utterance: the FEEL Project (Formal Explanations of Emotional Language)

The linguistic structures used by speakers to express emotions - such as surprise, disapproval, alarm (so-called "warnings"), and regret - display peculiar characteristics, including a cross-linguistic perspective, which distinguish them from very similar structures used in non-emotional contexts. These peculiar characteristics are primarily intonational and gestural (co-speech gestures).
This project aims to study the interaction between the various components of emotional sentence structures - the syntactic, prosodic, and gestural components - and context, from both a synchronic and cross-cultural, as well as a diachronic, perspective. In particular, the following topics will be addressed:

• syntactic, prosodic, and gestural analysis of sentences and fragments - that is, elliptical or non-sentential structures - in Italian and Italian dialects, compared with the realisation of the same structures in "culturally distant" languages such as Armenian, Korean, and Vietnamese.
• analysis of Old Italian and ancient Germanic languages with regard to the introduction of punctuation, in order to identify correlations between the presence of punctuation marks and the informational context - such as the given/new alternation - and emotional expression, for example emphasis on a constituent.

Coordinator: Alessandra Giorgi
Members: Marina Buzzoni, Federica Cognola, Chiara De Bastiani, Roland Hinterholz, Nicola Munaro

GLIBE – Global Ibero-Romance Languages Adaptation and Adaptability of Ibero-Romance Languages as "Global Languages" (GLIBE)

The group focuses on the study of Ibero-Romance languages (Spanish and Portuguese) as "global languages" historically and in the present day. In particular, it will analyse the phenomena of linguistic and stylistic transformation (adaptation) that are leading to a reconfiguration in grammatical, discursive, and pragmatic terms of the Spanish and Portuguese languages. It will also study the capacity of these languages to adapt to the challenges of the sociological and geopolitical changes of the contemporary world: migration phenomena, digital texts and genres, social media, fields of translation and linguistic and cultural mediation, new technologies applied to metalinguistic study and to learning and teaching as foreign languages, and the creation and use of dictionaries and corpora.

Coordinator: Florencio Del Barrio De La Rosa
Members: Vanessa Castagna, Elena Dal Maso, Laura Nadal Sanchis, Maria Eugenia Sainz Gonzalez, Giuseppe Trovato
PhD students: Antonella Bove, Emanuela Masi

Intra- and Interlinguistic, Intercultural and Intermodal Adaptation in Tourism and Cultural Heritage Communication from an Accessible Perspective

Research on tourism has involved our Department in various projects, including the PRIN Dietaly and the PNRR INest. This cross-disciplinary research group aims to study the complexity of the modes of intra- and interlinguistic, intercultural, intermodal (cross-medium adaptation), and semiotic adaptation in tourism communication broadly understood, along the following lines of research:

1. the adaptation of national, regional, or local cultural heritage (cultural memory and heritage) through creative forms of adaptation such as storytelling and destination brand communication, across various intra- and interlinguistic applications.
2. adaptation in cultural exhibition settings (museums, exhibitions, monuments, architectural structures) that is mindful of the specific needs of visitors.
3. the adaptation of language and communication applied to cultural heritage in order to promote accessibility and inclusion, through simplification strategies and adaptation for people with limited competence, and with the aid of new technologies and intermodal strategies, including between languages conveyed through different modalities (Italian, Italian Sign Language, tactile Italian Sign Language).

The group collaborates with the Department of Humanities at the University of Ferrara [ITA].

Coordinator: Mirella Agorni
Members: Chiara Branchini,  Anna Cardinaletti, Daniela Cesiri, Giuseppe De Bonis,  Maria Elisa Fina, Simone Francescato, Lara Mantovan,  Ashley Merrill Riggs, Linda Rossato, Francesca Santulli, Graziano Serragiotto, Francesca Volpato
PhD students: Giulia Cavalli, Viviana Mauro

Adaptation in Bilingualism/Multilingualism

The condition of bilingualism/multilingualism is a form of adaptation of a speaker's linguistic and cultural competence to different and co-present linguistic systems within a community. Various contexts of language contact will be examined (between standard and non-standard varieties, between minority or heritage languages and majority languages, between standard language and regional and local varieties, etc.), considering both languages acquired as native languages and those acquired subsequently, particularly in the Balkan, Germanic, Romance, and Slavic areas. The research will focus on the following topics:

1. synchronic and diachronic varieties as an effect of adaptation in various language contact contexts, in order to study the internal mechanisms of linguistic development, the processes of maintenance or innovation of the grammatical system, and the processes of grammaticalisation.
2. phenomena of contact and adaptation from dialect to standard language and from standard language to dialect in bidialectal speakers; adaptation of tools for measuring linguistic dominance in bilingual speakers to bidialectal contexts; adaptation of writing forms in languages that have no written standard.
3. cultural phenomena and adaptation in situations of bilingualism/multilingualism, multilingual novels, and comparative studies.
4. unimodal and bimodal bilingualism and phenomena of code switching, code mixing, and code blending. Evidence of simultaneous bilingual activation in comprehension and production tasks.
5. phenomena of linguistic and stylistic transformation and reconfiguration in grammatical, discursive, and pragmatic terms of "global languages" (with particular focus on Spanish and Portuguese).

Coordinator: Anna Cardinaletti
Members: Marija Bradaš, Chiara Branchini, Laura Brugè,  Vanessa Castagna, Elena Dal Maso, Florencio Del Barrio De La Rosa, Pavel Duryagin, Giuliana Giusti, Iliana Krapova, Gianluca Lebani, Lara Mantovan, Alessandro Mistrorigo, Laura Nadal Sanchis, Patrizio Rigobon, Maria Eugenia Sainz Gonzalez, Francesca Santulli, Alessandro Scarsella, Giuseppe Trovato, Giuseppina Turano, Francesca Volpato
PhD students: Maria Grazia Marrocu, Maria Andrea Carboni, Silla Paneghel, Pietro Rigo, Eleonora Digiorgio

Displacement/Adaptation/Transformation

This research group understands the key concept of the Project of Excellence—adaptation/adaptability—within transformation as a major paradigm of our era: the transformation of concepts, forms, and discourses. The research focuses on geographical displacement as a moment of conceptual transformation, with reference to the circulation of ideas between Europe and the Americas, while also opening up to a global horizon. From within their respective fields, each member studies how European thought, literature, and criticism adapt to new contexts and reinvent themselves along different routes, without overlooking the (highly topical) concern for the intimate link between destruction and form. The potential of adaptation is addressed in the specific case of European philosophies (Italian Theory), schools of literary criticism (narratology), aesthetic forms, and literary and artistic genres (myth, epic, fairy tale, theater, the novel, the Western), with particular attention to the question of coexisting multiple temporalities, the body, and the figure of the reader.

Coordinator: Filomena Mitrano
Members: Pia Masiero, Margherita Cannavacciuolo, Giulia Delogu, Massimo Stella, Cristina Fossaluzza, Alessandro Mistrorigo, Elisa Bordin
PhD student: Francesco Tortato

Literary Study of Comics Phenomena of Transposition of Literary Texts into the Language of Comics and the Graphic Novel 

A thorough review of the transposition of the literary canon into the language of comics and graphic novels still requires such onerous preliminary precautions that they undermine, at least at first glance, the undeniable appeal of the literature-comics relationship, both theoretically and historiographically. Despite the undeniable success of new media, the issue is burdened by a strong academic prejudice. This prejudice is justified insofar as the transformations of language, occurring at an ever-increasing speed, are difficult to classify, if only because of their complexity, which cannot be reduced to the usual objects of the linguistic-philological method. These objects are identified, with rare exceptions, with text-writing, within the confines of a framework that does not require the recognition of techniques of material production other than writing, or of the organization of the text-image relationship distinct from traditional rhetoric. Therefore, the aforementioned prejudice manifests a syndrome of superiority that denounces the unreasonableness of the appropriation of the history of comics and graphic novels by philological sciences and literary criticism. This appropriation can be granted on a provisional basis until a new balance of power emerges through the desire for cooperation between heterogeneous expertise. This is the aim. Over the course of the two-year period, additional and differentiated approaches to comics-related collecting have been added (in relation to the donation of Professor Alessandro Costantini's collection of books and related periodicals to the Department's Experimental Laboratories - Bembolab), promoting awareness through cataloging. One research direction has emerged at the 2025-2026 international Italian-French conference, Chambéry-Venice: Fumetto & Bande Dessinée, with a focus on the transpositions of literary and non-literary texts into the language of European comics.
Finally, in 2025, Professor Veronica Orazi joined the general project with the platform Cómic Salud Bienestar Cómic y Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible 3: Salud y Bienestar, aimed at documenting and interpreting the linguistic intersections between comics and science.

Coordinator: Alessandro Scarsella
Members: Fabio Caon, Tiziana D'Amico, Alice Favaro, Marco Fazzini, Veronica Orazi, Francesca Santulli, Giuseppe Sofo, Federico Zanettin
PhD students: Caterina Dacci, Benedetta D'Incau

Food Studies

The “Food Studies” research group aims to study the communicative dynamics and the historical, cultural, and literary implications surrounding the overarching theme of food and nutrition. The approaches used to explore this topic reflect the research interests and areas of expertise of the group’s members, such as the historical study of the role of food in identity formation across various cultures and in migration processes, the analysis of narratives of food and nutrition across various literary genres, and linguistic and translation studies – including from a multimodal and audiovisual perspective – of communicative dynamics across various genres and contexts. The linguistic and cultural areas investigated – which also consider contrastive perspectives – are diverse and include, but are not limited to, the English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and Italian-speaking worlds.

Coordinator: Daniela Cesiri
Members: Francesca Coccetta, Ashley Merrill Riggs, Linda Rossato, Laura Tosi, Giuseppe Trovato

Gender and Identity. Linguistic Adaptation in Languages and Cultures

Language is the most effective and pervasive tool for thinking and sharing identity. Gender, in turn, is one of the fundamental dimensions in the codification of social roles. In contemporary societies, the fact that gender equality has not yet been achieved, on the one hand, and the emergence of new identities beyond the female-male dichotomy, on the other, create communicative needs that are expressed through different linguistic forms depending on the systemic structure of languages (with or without gender morphology on nouns, pronouns, etc.) and on political and socio-cultural diversity. 
The research will focus on the following themes:

1. comparative analysis of adaptations to gender representations in languages with nominal morphological gender (such as Romance languages), pronominal gender only (such as English), and no gender (such as LIS, Finnish, or Turkish).
2. translatability of inclusive language between morphologically related languages with culturally different linguistic uses and between morphologically divergent languages.
3. gender in machine translation and artificial intelligence.
4. experimental methods for studying use and comprehension of inclusive gender neomorphs.

Coordinator: Giuliana Giusti
Members: Chiara Branchini, Laura Brugè, Anna Cardinaletti, Rosa Caroli, Vanessa Castagna, Gianluca Lebani,  Lara Mantovan, Laura Nadal Sanchis,  Maria Eugenia Sainz Gonzalez,  Giuseppe Sofo
PhD students: Federica Marenghi, Antonella Bove

Ideas, Languages, Politics. Metamorphoses in Space and Time

The group brings together scholars from the fields of history, literature, and linguistics, united by a shared interest in the analysis of ideas, words, concepts, forms of communication, and political languages, studied through their processes of change, metamorphosis, and adaptation across different spatial and temporal contexts. Research focuses on the modern and contemporary periods, with particular attention to Europe, the Americas, and East Asia. The objects of study include: the processes through which data and information are transformed into operational ideas and political languages; the metamorphosis of political ideas in their transition across different discursive and temporal contexts; the circulation of ideas and the ways in which they impact society, especially in urban spaces; the adaptation of languages in their passage across genres and media, conceived and constructed to respond to the needs of different audiences; the multidirectional migrations of ideas and languages among different forms of knowledge and the reciprocal influences between history, literature, and politics; the creation of new languages corresponding to new ideas through the semantic evolution of words and key concepts and through the creation of neologisms; and the intrinsic historicity of the words of politics, together with the weight of historical context in the construction and consolidation of the meanings of terms used in political debate.

Coordinator: Giulia Delogu
Members: Francesca Antonini, Duccio Basosi, Elisa Bordin, Rosa Caroli, Evgeny Dobrenko, Alessandro Farsetti, Cristina Fossaluzza, Gianluca Lebani, Michele Mioni, Mônica Muniz De Souza Simas, Rolf Petri, Stefano Petrungaro, Giuseppe Sofo, Massimo Stella, Antonio Trampus

Literary and Cultural Adaptation in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Our group investigates adaptation as a central cultural logic of the long eighteenth century. We study rewriting, translation, imitation, remediation, appropriation, and transnational exchange not as secondary practices, but as primary modes of creativity, circulation, and critique. From rewritings of Don Quixote or Shakespeare, to the innovative novel forms of Richardson, Sterne, and Diderot, the adaptive forces of salons, clubs, Bluestocking groups; from biblical rewritings to scientific fiction, periodicals, dictionaries, theatre, visual culture, and material objects, we explore how inherited forms were transformed for new audiences, media, markets, and socio-historical pressures. Our mission is to rethink originality, authorship, fidelity, and reception by showing how Enlightenment culture continually remade itself through adaptive practices. Across languages, disciplines, and national traditions, we define adaptation as a force shaping knowledge, taste, ideology, and cultural memory.

Coordinator: Flavio Gregori
Members: Magda Campanini, Cristina Fossaluzza, Massimo Stella
PhD students: Emma Quiriconi, Alice Tartari, Erica Vianello

Italian Minority Languages as a Laboratory for the Study of Linguistic Adaptation Strategies in Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective

This group intends to study linguistic adaptation strategies in the context of minority languages spoken in Italy, Balkan, and Slavic territories. In particular, the research will focus on Germanic languages spoken in Italy (Mòcheno, Cimbrian, Sappadino, Timavese, Walser), Arbëresh, Ladin varieties, and languages found in contact situations within the Balkan and Slavic areas. These varieties will be studied from a synchronic perspective through the collection and analysis of new linguistic data, and systematically compared with their languages of origin (also from a diachronic perspective and within their contact situations), in order to identify the dynamics of linguistic influence and interference. Finally, the tools and methods offered by the digital paradigm will be employed for the conservation and dissemination of the collected data and research results in order to preserve and promote linguistic and cultural heritage.

Coordinator: Federica Cognola
Members: Marina Buzzoni, Chiara De Bastiani, Alessandra Giorgi, Roland Hinterholzl, Iliana Krapova, Nicola Munaro, Luisa Ruvoletto, Giuseppina Turano

Literatures, Adaptation, Anthropocene

The research group will focus on the connections between adaptation as a literary device and adaptation as a cultural, political, and social strategy that the human community is called upon to imagine in an era of environmental crisis. Combining diverse linguistic and literary competences, the group will address this broad question in comparative form, considering both the adaptation of humans to the environment and that of the environment to the human presence. Contemporary Scandinavian literatures (Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Sámi), American, English and postcolonial, and Spanish literatures will be examined. The adaptation of literary texts and genres across centuries and geographical areas in response to climate change will be analysed, examining the classics (Shakespeare, Stevenson, etc.), long-standing literary traditions that are taking on new ecological connotations today (utopian/dystopian fiction), and more recent subgenres (climate fiction, disaster fiction, solarpunk). The corpus examined will include fiction, children's/Young Adult fiction, poetry, theatre, and cinema, and perspectives including ecocritical and postcolonial approaches will be combined. Among the themes considered will be the relationship between adaptation and memory - how the re-memory of certain national traumas contributes to an ethical adjustment of the sense of national belonging, or how the memory of other traumas can serve to prepare for environmental traumas.

Coordinator: Shaul Bassi
Members: Elisa Bordin, Sara Culeddu, Lucio De Capitani, Marco Fazzini, Pia Masiero, Laura Tosi

Educational and Linguistic Pathways for People with Language and Learning Difficulties

The research focuses on adapting language to the cognitive, communicative, and linguistic characteristics of the individual, and addresses the following topics:

1. adaptation of linguistic tools for educational assessment and the analysis of language competence in children and adolescents with language difficulties, language disorders, learning disorders, deafness, and special educational needs;
2. adaptation of multimodal and multimedia tools and methods for language intervention aimed at the inclusion of people with language difficulties;
3. study and research on the use of Italian Sign Language (LIS) in all cases of communicative disabilities that prevent the use of verbal communication, both in children and adults.

Coordinator: Francesca Volpato
Members: Monica Banzato, Chiara Branchini, Fabio Caon, Anna Cardinaletti, Elena Fornasiero, Maria Cecilia Luise, Lara Mantovan, Marcella Menegale, Graziano Serragiotto

Studies on Translation, Rewriting, and Adaptation in the Digital Age (STRADE)

The research group “Studies on Translation, Rewriting and Adaptation in the Digital Age” (STRADE) is composed of researchers from various fields within linguistics, translation and literary studies, and aims to focus on the study of translation in the contemporary era in both a linguistic and metaphorical sense, whilst also embracing the Digital Humanities, the study of the interaction between translation and digital technologies, and more “undisciplined” forms of research, including arts-based research and action research. The concept of translation is therefore broad: in addition to the transposition of texts from one language to another and the rewriting and adaptation of literary texts, the group will also undertake studies on migration and post-migration literature as a form of intercultural translation and adaptation, and on the translation of the self as a form of adaptation that is not only linguistic but also human. The group will also address journalistic translation and multimodality, linguistic and/or intercultural mediation, and studies on the evolution of literary and translation practices in the digital age, with a particular focus on collaborative practices and forms of translation, rewriting and adaptation that promote greater linguistic, social and cultural inclusivity. Particular attention will be paid to the educational implications of the group’s research and to the collaborative practices typical of the digital age.

Coordinator: Giuseppe Sofo
Members: Marija Bradaš, Magda Campanini, Vanessa Castagna, Massimo Ciaravolo, Sara Culeddu, Maria Elisa Fina, Yannick Hamon, Marco Infurna, Ashley Merrill Riggs, Giuseppe Trovato, Federico Zanettin
PhD students: Michela Lagnena, Erica Vianello