Dr Elena Sottilotta

Murray Edwards College
  • Research Fellow and Affiliated Lecturer
Dr Elena Sottilotta

Contact

Location

  • Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, CB3 0DF

About

Dr Elena Sottilotta is a Research Fellow at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the MMLL Faculty. A Fulbright alumna, she obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge with a research project in women’s studies, folklore and fairy-tale studies. In 2024, she was a Visiting Scholar at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and a Fellow of the Ragusa Foundation for the Humanities in New York.

Her areas of expertise encompass women’s and gender studies, the history of folklore, fairy-tale studies, children’s literature, comparative literature and intermedia studies. She is the author of Seekers of Wonder: Women Writing Folk and Fairy Tales in Nineteenth-Century Italy and Ireland (Princeton University Press, 2025). Her monograph centres women’s roles as collectors, compilers and tellers of folk and fairy tales in European peripheries during the long nineteenth century.

 

Research

Elena’s research explores non-canonical voices and narratives in the European folk and fairy-tale tradition. She also has a keen interest in the poetics and politics of adaptation of fairy tales and children’s literature in contemporary media. She has presented her research at numerous international conferences and has been invited as guest lecturer in several universities in Europe and in the United States. Her broader interests include Italian, Irish and Anglo-American literary crossings and oral history from the nineteenth century to the present, translation studies, language pedagogy and Mediterranean island studies. She is the founder of the Cambridge Research Network for Fairy-Tale Studies, serves on the Scientific Committee of the European Fairy Tale Route (Council of Europe), and acts as a consultant for the International Fairy-Tale Filmography (University of Winnipeg, Canada).

Scholarships, Prizes and Awards

Elena has received several competitive scholarships, prizes and awards, among these:

  • The British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant. Project: “Fairy-Tale Weavers: Unravelling Women’s Hidden Networks and Forgotten Voices in Nineteenth-Century Italian Folklore and Children’s Literature.”
  • The Women’s Studies Caucus Award (American Association for Italian Studies)
  • The St. Catharine’s College Prize for Distinction in Research (University of Cambridge)
  • The Estella Canziani Postgraduate Bursary for Research (Folklore Society in London)
  • Fulbright scholarship to teach Italian language and culture in the United States (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
  • Erasmus Mundus Master’s Scholarship Crossways in Cultural Narratives (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal; University of Sheffield, UK; Université de Perpignan Via Domitia, France)

 

Teaching, Supervising and Examining Experience

  • Experience in serving as PhD external examiner and in supervising long essays and year-abroad projects. Please feel free to reach out for enquiries.
  • Lecturer for IT1/ITA3 “Texts and Contexts.” Module: “Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Cultural Evolution of an Italian Icon across Media.”
  • Postgraduate lecturer for the MPhil in Literature, Culture and Thought at the University of Cambridge. Course: “Marginalities in Nineteenth-Century European Culture.” Topic: “Echoes from Afar: Women Linguists, Folklorists and Storytellers in Nineteenth-Century Italy.”
  • Lecturer and supervisor for IT5 “Italian Identities: Place, Language, and Culture.” Module: ‘‘Between the Old and the New: Grazia Deledda’s Sardinia.”
  • Italian language supervisor and supervisor for IT1/ITA3 “Texts and Contexts.”
  • Certified English and Italian language teacher (CELTA and DITALS) and Language Examiner (PLIDA and CELI). Elena has taught in Italy, England and the United States to language learners coming from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds, including university students, young learners, immigrants and refugees. Her interests in this field include creative approaches to language learning, creation of authentic didactic materials and implementation of storytelling and creative writing strategies in the FL/L2 classroom.

 

Key Publications

Monograph

Edited Issues and Volumes

Book Chapters and Journal Articles 

Interviews

Selected Invited Lectures, Papers and Seminars

  • 2025 Invited Speaker to the British Academy for the launch event of Folklore Reimagined, a themed season curated by Ronald Hutton and Marina Warner. Panel: “Reviving Roots: Lore and identity”, with Matthew Cheeseman.
  • 2025 Invited Speaker to LUMSA University in Palermo, Sicily. Seminar: “Di fiaba, di isole, di narratrici.” Roundtable discussion with Vincenzo Schirripa, Leonardo Acone, Livia Romano and Rosario Perricone. 
  • 2024 Invited Speaker to Harvard University, Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Folklore and Mythology Program. Seminar: “Women in the History of Italian and Irish Folklore: Transcultural Perspectives in the Long Nineteenth Century.”
  • 2024 Invited Lecturer to Ca’ Foscari University of Venice for the Fairy-Tale Studies Seminar Series Riscrivere la fiaba: Percorsi di un genere tra tradizione e adattamento, organised by Alessandro Cabiati and Laura Tosi. Seminar: “I mille volti delle fiabe: Itinerari intermediali da Giambattista Basile a Emma Dante.”
  • 2024 Invited Speaker to the Yorkshire Festival of Story. Panel discussion with artists and storytellers Maria Asp, Kathy Shimpock, and Sita Brand. Theme: “Kindness in Fairy Tales.”
  • 2021/25 Invited Lecturer to the GEMMA Women’s and Gender Studies Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree Course “Feminist Historiography.” Topic: “Women, Folklore and Fairy Tales in the Long Nineteenth Century.”

 

Selected Conference Organisation

  • Lead convenor of the international conference Fairy-Tale Trouble and the Art of Fluidity: Gender, Genre, Media, co-organised with Alice Parrinello at the University of Cambridge. Secured competitive funding from the CRASSH Event Funding Scheme.
  • Co-organiser of the international conference Strings of Imagination: Rethinking Pinocchio in the New Millennium, with Pablo a Marca at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, sponsored by the Department of Italian Studies at Brown University, the Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi, the Cambridge Research Network for Fairy-Tale Studies and the Ragusa Foundation for the Humanities.
  • Co-organiser of the conference Women in Sardinia: Creativity and Self-Expression, with Sara Delmedico on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Grazia Deledda’s birth, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Italian Cultural Institute in London, the Society for Italian Studies, the British-Italian Society, the Italian Bookshop in London and the Italian Section at the University of Cambridge. 

 

Selected Public Engagement and Outreach Initiatives

  • Public engagement event on Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, co-organized with Pablo a Marca. Performative reading by visual poet and photographer Erminia De Luca, author of Pinocchio’s artistic reinterpretation Ora dipende da te (2022).
  • Public engagement project Hopeful Folktales: Nurturing Diversity, Gender Equity and Social Justice through Tales of Old Times (Recipient of the University Council of Modern Languages Postgraduate Bursary).
  • Storytelling and creative writing workshop “Brave Heroines in a New Light: A Journey into Uncharted Italian Fairy Tales” within the multidisciplinary art exhibition on FINT (female, intersex, non-binary, transgender) folklore Buried Moons – Forgotten Tales from Beyond the Patriarchy, organised by Annie Randall and Emily Unsworth White in Bristol.
  • Co-organiser of the Gianni Rodari Virtual Theatre Show with theatre director Ludovico Nolfi, in partnership with the Cambridge University Italian Society.
  • PhD Tutor for the Brilliant Club Scholars Programme, an award-winning university access charity that recruits doctoral researchers to share their academic expertise in UK-state schools with pupils from underrepresented backgrounds.
  • Postgraduate Session Leader within the Postgraduate Outreach Scheme of the University of Cambridge.