Valentina Mele, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, has won a prestigious Global Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions which will bring her to the University of Notre Dame this fall.

While in residence at Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies, Mele will work on the project “AvantDante — The Reception of Dante in 1945-2001 U.S. avant-garde poetic communities,” which will examine the impact of modernist Dante on the American poetic avant-garde in the latter half of the 20th century. The fellowship is sponsored by the Università di Pavia Department of Humanities and will last three years.

Mele will spend the first two years of the fellowship at the University of Notre Dame under the supervision of professor Theodore J. Cachey Jr., the Pizzo Family Chair in Dante Studies and Ravarino Family Director of Italian and Dante Studies in the College of Arts & Letters.

The Global program, which represents one of the most competitive funding programs for young researchers in Europe, supports and extends international mobility beyond the borders of Europe. Mele's project encompasses a total budget of nearly $500,000 and will finance two years of research in various archives across the United States, such as Notre Dame, University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, University at Buffalo, and Boston University, as well as her subsequent research at the Università di Pavia. The corpus of appropriations, recycling, and translations of Dante's work will be systematically mapped through the use of digital tools to create an accessible archive and to offer an organic reconstruction of the post-modernist Dante.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships program supports the careers of young scholars for the promotion of research excellence through international agreements that allow the recipients to develop their projects at the most suitable and qualified institutions according to their field of study.

In 2024, more than 10,000 applicants submitted proposals for the program and only 1,700 projects were selected across Europe. Only 168 applicants were winners of Global fellowship.

Originally published by Lora Jury at italianstudies.nd.edu on April 03, 2025.