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Professor Federico Faloppa

Professor Federico Faloppa profile picture
  • Programme Director for Italian Studies
  • REF Impact Lead for Modern Languages and Linguistics

 

Office

Miller 125

Building location

Miller building

Areas of interest

My main areas of interest are focused on:

  • history of the Italian language
  • sociolinguistics
  • discourse analysis
  • intercultural communication
  • language policy
  • migration and refugee studies
  • intellectual networks
  • migrant writings
  • Italian contemporary literature.

Research interests

My research interests include:

  • linguistic construction and representation of otherness
  • language and power
  • language policies
  • language and migration
  • migrant writings
  • intercultural communication
  • miscommunication in multilingual contexts
  • migration, healthcare and language.

Postgraduate supervision

I supervise postgraduate study in Italian linguistics, media and migration, discourse analysis, and migrant writings. For my expertise, I have also been appointed PhD external examiner at Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff and Sheffield.

Current supervisions:

  • Solange Santarelli (Department of Languages and Cultures): Multilingualism and language learning among minor refugees in Palermo.
  • Pola Poletto (Department of Languages and Cultures):The Italian National Health System in the early years of the Italian Unification.
  • Marina Kracht (Department of Languages and Cultures):: Cross cultural response to the Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the North South divide of Europe in the case of Germany, France and Spain.

Completed supervisions:

  • Giulia Bassi: Il concetto di ‘popolo’ tra storia politica e semantica storica nel partito comunista italiano(2016).
  • Michael McDermott : A Tradition in the Making: An Examination of the 1861 Romanesco Translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew by Giuseppe Caterbi (2017).

Research projects

I am currently co-investigator in the ESRC-funded international network “ProLanguage - The protective role of language in global migration and mobility: language policies and practices in refugee settings (£ 131,000) and in the Horizon 2020 / Marie Skłodowska-Curie funded Innovative Training Networks (MSC-ITN-MULTI) “MultiMind” (100% score; £ 3.7M, of which 500K allocated to Reading).

Academic qualifications

  • Laurea (BA) in Letters and Philosophy (Turin, 1997)
  • PhD in Italian (University of London, 2008)

Awards and honours

Internal grants and awards

In 2016, together with my colleagues in Italian Studies at Reading, I was awarded the RUSU Outstanding contribution to Teaching Excellence Award. In 2016, I was also awarded my third University Teaching and Learning Development Fund for my innovative project From the classroom to the world: A student-led radio programme on language and migration. The previous TLDF had been awarded in 2010 and 2012, respectively for A student-let newsletter in linguistics (2010) and Exploring Modern Languages Linguistics (2012, together with my colleague Dr Chiara Ciarlo).

Professional bodies/affiliations

I am currently in the Steering Committee of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM), University of Reading, where I co-lead, together with my colleagues Dr Tony Capstick, the research theme on “Migration”.

In the last ten years, I have collaborated with several academic and non-academic centres and institutions, among which the University of Oxford, the University of Sevilla, the University of Turin (where I have been appointed Visiting lecturer in 2015), the University of Basilicata, the University of Trieste, the University of Palermo, the CGIL trade union in Piedmont, the Azienda Sanitaria (equivalent to the NHS) in Bari, the Alexander Langer Foundation in Bozen, the NGO “NAGA” in Milan, the Journalist Association “Carta di Roma” in Rome, the Italian Cultural Institute in London.

Evidence of research esteem

In the last ten years, I have been invited to ca. 100 seminars, lectures, conferences, and public talks and events on my research topics and interests. Research and T&L leadership at National level I am currently national representative for Linguistics at the University Council for Modern Languages (appointment by election in 2017).

Research and T&L leadership at National level

I am currently national representative for Linguistics at the University Council for Modern Languages (appointment by election in 2017).

Selected publications

I am the author of four monographs:

  • Lavare un etiope. La pelle cangiante di un topos antico, Rome: Aracne (300 pages).
  • Razzisti a parole (per tacer dei fatti), Rome: Laterza, 2011 (144 pages).
  • Parole contro. La rappresentazione del diverso nell’italiano e nei dialetti, Milan: Garzanti, 2004 (252 pages).
  • Lessico e alterità: la formulazione del diverso, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2000 (168 pages).

And I am currently working on the following monographs:

  • Crisi. Storia di una parola, Venice: Marciana University Press, 2028
  • Il politicamente corretto. Un’introduzione critica, Rome: Carocci, 201
  • Brevi lezioni di linguistica. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, forthcoming.

I have also edited:

  • Non per il potere. Scritti scelti di Alexander Langer, Milan: Chiarelettere, 2012 (160 pages)

and co-edited

  • Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative (with Emma Bond and Guido Bonsaver), Oxford: Peter Lang, Italian Modernities Series, in press, March 2015.

Publications