Principal Investigator
Full Professor of English Literature
Maddalena Pennacchia is Full Professor of English Literature at Roma Tre University, where she directs the PhD programme in Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Her main research field is intermediality and English literature, that is the relation of the written text to media and performative arts (rewriting, adaptation, appropriation). With this critical and methodological approach she has published extensively – but not exclusively – on Shakespeare and Jane Austen, as well as on the biopic and literary tourism. More recently she has been exploring the relationship between sound (music in particualr) and text; in 2022 she curated the soundtrack of the production Calibano, o lo schiavo by Guillermo Heras for the Festival Herencias (Teatro Palladium) and started a collaboration with Roma Tre Radio, for which she created the podcast Globe Talks (2023), as well as the ongoing programme Babel Songs, (2022 to present). With Lucia Esposito she co-directs the radio company Literary Soundscapes and co-curates the production of Podcasting Shakespeare (2024).
In 2024 she has been elected in the Board of Directors of the Fondazione Teatro Palladium and curates Shakespeare encore, a programme of Shakespearean adaptations for the stage.
She is currently P.I. of the funded research project (PRIN 2022) Applied Shakespeare: Developing New Educational Models for Transversal Competences and Life-skills.
Her Shakespearean publications include two monographs: Tracce del moderno nel teatro di Shakespeare (2008) and Shakespeare intermediale. I drammi romani (2012); several articles including: “Intermedial Products for Digital Natives: British Theatre-Cinema on Italian Screens”, Intermédialités (2017); “Intermedial Props in Shakespeare’s Roman Plays”, Shakespeare (2019) and “Younger Generations and Empathic Communication: Learning to Feel in Another Language with Shakespeare at the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre in Rome”, Shakespeare Survey (special issue on Shakespeare and Education, 2021); a number of volume chapters including “Antony and Cleopatra Performance History” in Antony and Cleopatra A Critical Reader edited by Domenico Lovascio. Arden Early Modern Drama Guides (2020); she has also coedited several volumes and journal issues including Questioning Bodies in Shakespeare's Rome (2010), Shakespeare and Tourism (2019), a special issue of Cahiers Élisabéthains - Shakespeare and European Geographies: Borders and Power (2022) and a special issue of Lingue e Linguaggi - Experiencing Shakespeare in a Digital Environment (2022). Her book on Adattamento, appropriazione, condivisione di un classico: Pride and Prejudice di Jane Austen won the ANDA Award 2022 (Associazione Nazionale Docenti di Anglistica).
She is currently President of the Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies (IASEMS) and a member of the European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA) for which she co-convened the International Conference ESRA 2019 at Roma Tre; she has also been a delegate member of the Stratford International Shakespeare Conference (ISC) since 2018.
She serves as reviews editor of the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance (Intellect), and member of the editorial and advisory board.
She is the Director of the Archive Gigi Proietti Globe Theater Silvano Toti, a project developed during her collaboration with the Elizabethan Theatre in Villa Borghese (2020-).
She is project manager of the project Culture sonore, which she created in 2023 in collaboration with the Municipality of Ravello (Città della Musica), a festival that has already accomplished two editions.
She regularly performs as onscreen scientific consultant for RAI Cultura and in that capacity she participated in the following documentary series: Shakespeare Class, L’Italia di Shakespeare, Learning English with Shakespeare at the Gigi Proietti Globe Theatre, Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes, as well as William Blake la visione e l’infinito, all available on RAI Play.
She authored a biofiction for children entiled Shakespeare e il sogno di un'estate (Lapis, 2008), which was also translated into Spanish and Romenian.
