I am currently an Associate Lecturer at UCL (Department of Greek & Latin) and a Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS (School of Languages, Cultures, and Linguistics). I teach UG and PGT courses in Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.
Until March 2024 I was a Research Fellow at UCL, where I worked on the Leverhulme-funded project “Comparative Classics: Greece, Rome, India”.
I started my Sanskrit studies in 2008, during my BA in Classics at Milan University. I continued studying Sanskrit language and literature throughout my MA in Classics (Milan University) and my MA in Languages and Cultures of South Asia (SOAS).
In June 2018, I defended my PhD thesis at SOAS, titled “The Erotic Untranslatable: The Modern Reception of Sanskrit Love Poetry in The West and in India”.
I began teaching Sanskrit in 2014 at SOAS (University of London), while working on my doctoral degree. In 2017, I moved on to adult teaching, first at the SOAS Language Centre and then at City Lit (London), where until March 2021 I taught Classical Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.
In 2018 I inaugurated a Sanskrit course at the British Museum (in partnership with City Lit), which allows me to teach the rudiments of the language while sharing my passion for South Asian manuscripts and miniature paintings.
Articles and contributions
[Annotated Italian translation of Adya Rangacharya’s English version of the Natyashastra:] Natyasastra. L’arte del teatro indiano, Biblioteca Teatrale/Memorie di Teatro, Bulzoni Editore, October 2024.
Sex and the Sanskrit Classics: Untranslatability, Code-Switching, and Sexed-up Translations, published in FRAME 36.2: “Writing Sex”, 21 Dec 2023.
Eastern Love, Western Beloveds: Sanskrit Heroines in a Frontier Territory, published in Espacio Fronterizo • Espace–Frontière • Borderland, 1 June 2021.
Untranslatable word: That feeling of living vicariously through fictional lovers, published in Clove (clovemagazine.com), 12 May 2020.
Eastern Poetry by Western Poets: Powys Mathers’ ‘Translations’ of Sanskrit Erotic Lyrics, published in Comparative Critical Studies, Volume 17, Issue 2, June 2020 (‘West-East’ Lyric: A Comparative Approach to Lyric History), pp. 205–224.
(You can download the Accepted Manuscript below.)
Translation Immoral? Contamination, Hybridity, and Vociferous Silences in Early Twentieth-Century Translations of Sanskrit Erotic Poetry, published in Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, Volume 5, Issue 1, September 2018, pp. 7-21.
(You can download the published article below.)
Book review of Yigal Bronner, Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration, published in Pandanus ’11: Nature in Literature, Art, Myth and Ritual, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2011, pp. 152-6.