Silvia Antosa is Associate Professor of English at the University for Foreigners of Siena, Italy, where she is the Director of the University Centre for Foreign Languages (CLASS). She has published extensively on Victorian fiction, nineteenth-century travel accounts and translations and contemporary British novels. She is the author of the following monographs: Frances Elliot and Italy: Writing Travel, Writing the Self (Mimesis 2018); Richard Francis Burton: Victorian Explorer and Translator (Peter Lang, 2012) and Crossing Boundaries: Bodily Paradigms in Jeanette Winterson’s Fiction 1985-2000 (Aracne 2008). Antosa has edited several inter- and transdisciplinary volumes on queer theories and practices, which include: Queer Crossings: Theories, Bodies, Texts (Mimesis 2012); Gender and Sexuality: Rights, Language and Performativity (Aracne 2012) and Omosapiens II: Spazi e identità queer (Carocci 2007). She has recently co-edited a special issue of the journal de genere on ‘Transnational Subjects and Intercultural Identities: the Global South’ (2021) (https://www.degenere-journal.it/index.php/degenere/article/view/167). She the co-editor of the Series AngloSophia. Studies in English Literature and Culture (Mimesis) and is a member of several international networks of Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is currently working with Charlotte Ross (University of Birmingham) on a project funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust on “Cultural Discourses on Desire between Women: A Queer Comparative Analysis”.

Paolo Frascà is Assistant Professor in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. His work focuses on three main areas: pedagogy, particularly the teaching of Italian language and culture through a sociocultural approach and through collaborative, experiential methodologies; migration studies, with a focus on the Italian-Canadian community and its histories, languages, practices, and cultural production; sexuality and gender studies, specifically Queer theories and the Italian gay liberation movement of the 1970s. Dr. Frascà has published several peer-reviewed essays, in recognized scholarly journals and volumes, in areas that span from sociolinguistics and dialectology to the intersection between migration and queerness. He is Co-Director of two projects at the University of Toronto’s Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian-Canadian Studies: Indigenous-Italian-Canadian Connections (with Dr. Angela Nardozi, University of Toronto) and the SSHRC-funded Queer Italian-Canadian Artists (with Dr. Licia Canton, Accenti Magazine). Dr. Frascà also oversees a number of experiential and cultural activities in his role of Language Coordinator. Additional roles at the University of Toronto include Steering Committee Member and Affiliated Faculty at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, Affiliated Faculty at the Global Migration Lab (Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy), and Co-Lead of the Global Languages Initiative. He is a contributor to and member of various local and international organizations, including the Endangered Language Alliance of Toronto and the Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca Queer.

Charlotte Ross is Reader in Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, where she is also Head of Modern Languages. Her research focuses on how bodies, gender and sexuality are understood, constructed and represented in socio-cultural contexts. She has explored both textual representations and lived experience, in relation to practices of social engagement and activism. She is author of monographs, chapters and articles that explore these topics, including Eccentricity and Sameness. Discourses on lesbianism and desire between women in Italy, 1860s-1930s (Peter Lang, 2015), and ‘Surviving melancholy and mourning: a queer politics of damage in Italian literary representations of same-sex parenting’, Phenomenology and Mind, 2020. With Silvia Antosa (Siena), she is currently completing a BA/Leverhulme-funded project entitled 'Cultural Discourses on Desire between Women. A Queer Comparative Analysis’, which explores queer Bildungsromane with women protagonists, published in Italy, France and the UK in the 1920s and 30s. This series of events on ‘Queer Kinship’ are linked to a developing research project exploring cultural discourses on LGBTQ+ families and queer kinship, again from a comparative perspective.