Serenella Iovino
Guest of Director 2026–2027

Serenella Iovino is James G. Hanes Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US). Her research moves across literature, philosophy, and environmental humanities, asking how stories shape the ways humans understand and inhabit the living world. Beginning with the philosophical novel and concepts of nature in the age of Goethe, her work has expanded to ecocriticism, environmental justice, landscape studies, and multispecies thought.

Her books include Material Ecocriticism (Indiana University Press, 2013, with Serpil Oppermann), Ecocriticism and Italy (Bloomsbury, 2016; Italian edition Paesaggio civile, Il Saggiatore, 2022), and Italo Calvino's Animals (Cambridge University Press, 2021; Italian edition Gli animali di Calvino, Treccani, 2023). Several have received major awards, including the Modern Language Association and the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prizes. In 2025, she received the Seres Puentes Award from the UNESCO-sponsored Humanities for the Environment North American Observatory at Arizona State University (US), recognizing her contributions to the environmental humanities.

Serenella is also co-founder and co-editor of Cambridge University Press's Elements in Environmental Humanities and a regular contributor to the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, where she writes on literature, philosophy, and environmental issues for a broad public.