I am an Italian native and Visiting Lecturer of Italian Studies in the Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies at UBC. I specialise in Italian language teaching as well as in the literary and cultural production of the Italian American diaspora.

My doctoral research at Birkbeck, University of London, entitled Unsafe Bodies. A Kleinian Study of Patriarchy and Violence in Italian American Female-Authored Writing (2020–2025), investigates how Italian American women writers represent violence, trauma, and gendered oppression, read through the lens of Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytic theory. This project foregrounds literature as a site of negotiation with patriarchal structures and bodily onslaughts, often anticipating psychoanalytic concepts themselves.

Interests

My scholarship bridges Italian American literature and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on Melanie Klein’s theories. My doctoral work examines how literary texts of the Italian American diaspora articulate patriarchal violence, gendered oppression, and identity formation. Through a Kleinian lens, I explore how narratives of trauma, bodily onslaughts, and cultural crossings are inscribed in literature, often before psychoanalytic theory itself articulated them.

In addition to psychoanalytic criticism, my interests extend to:

• The broader literary production of the Italian American diaspora and its negotiation of cultural conflict and crossings.
• Literary representations of gender violence—including rape and discrimination—in Italian American writing.
• Applied linguistics and second language acquisition, particularly in relation to phonology, phonetics, educational technologies, cooperative learning strategies, and narrative in language teaching.

Current projects

• Unsafe Bodies. A Kleinian Study of Patriarchy and Violence in Italian American Female-Authored Writing (PhD Thesis, 2020–2025)
• Strade Dorate – Osservatorio di Letteratura e Cultura Italo Americana (co-founder, 2020–present)
• Anthology of Italian Migrant Female Writers (in progress)

Anthologies

And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere, Radici Edizioni, 2024. (C0-curator)

Courses of Italian

DiversITALY: Elementary Italian with Inclusive Language and Gender Equality Volume 1, Kendall Hunt, 2022. (contribution)

9 Passi nove, interactive multimedia course for teaching Italian – A1 Level, Juan Carlos Barbero Bernal, Chiara Businaro, Valmori Michela, CLUEB, Bologna, 2008.

9 Passi nove, interactive multimedia course for teaching Italian – A2 Level Juan Carlos Barbero Bernal, Chiara Businaro, Valmori Michela, CLUEB, 2009

Authored Books

Rosa, La storia mai raccontata di una giovane immigrate italoamericana, Capire Edizioni, Forlì, 2019

Rosa, The untold secrets of an Italian American immigrant and her hidden secrets, Booksprint, Salerno, 2018

Nuovo Mondo, in Adelaide Literary Magazine, October 2019

Articles

Villella, D. & Valmori, M., (2023) “Rethinking identity with second-generation Italian female writers”, Dandelion: Postgraduate Arts Journal and Research Network11(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ddl.9021

Valmori Michela, Riflessioni kleiniane su paranoia e libido in Floridiana di Emanuele Pettener, in “Campi Immaginabili”, 66-67/2022, Rubbettino Editore, pp. 498-514.

Valmori Michela, Dalla storia al memoir. Rosa, la storia mai raccontata di una giovane immigrata italoamericana, in Altreitalie, 62/2021, pp. 113-119.

Valmori Michela, Chiusa Sclafani, in Italian Americana, Vol. XXXVIII No. 1 Winter 2020, Loyola University.

From Meldola to Litchfield, Connecticut, in “Grande Emigrazione”. Meldola-Litchfield, Romagna- Connecticut, Italia-Stati Uniti. Una storia transnazionale. / A community during the “Great Migration”. Meldola-Litchfield, Romagna-Connecticut, Italy-United States: a transnational story. Edited by Maurizio Ridolfi, Cesena Società Editrice “Il Ponte Vecchio”, 2019.

Interview to Frances Baldi, in “Grande Emigrazione”. Meldola-Litchfield, Romagna-Connecticut, Italia-Stati Uniti. Una storia transnazionale. / A community during the “Great Migration”. Meldola- Litchfield, Romagna-Connecticut, Italy-United States: a transnational story. Edited by Maurizio Ridolfi, Cesena Società Editrice “Il Ponte Vecchio”, 2019.

What if the Beat Generation started earlier than Kerouac? Contrapunctual Reading of On the Road and its literary indebtedness, [Humanities]-Special Issue-Beat Generation Writers as Readers of World Literature, 2018.

A day with Antonia Sparano, Amici Journal, Chicago, 2012.

Awarded as a co-curator of the anthology And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere, for its contribution to the Literature of Italian national roots by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (2024).

Appointed Visiting Lecturer by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and the Italian General Consulate (2023–present).

Fulbright Distinguished Professorship in Italian Studies, University of Notre Dame (2017–2018), awarded by the Fulbright Commission.

Visiting Scholarship at King’s College London (2013–2014).

International Research Scholarship at the University of Exeter (2011).

International Scholarship at Glasgow Caledonian University (1998–1999).