Dr Elena Sottilotta

Degrees:     

• PhD, University of Cambridge

Research Interests:    

• Women’s and gender studies
• Folklore and fairy-tale studies
• Children’s literature
• Comparative literature
• Mediterranean studies
• Island studies
• Film and adaptation studies
• Language pedagogy

Biography:    

Dr Elena Sottilotta is a Research Fellow in Italian at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics. A Fulbright alumna, she obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2022 with a research project in women’s studies, folklore and fairy-tale studies, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Vice-Chancellor’s Award. 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 an alumna of the EU-funded Joint MA Programme Crossways in Cultural Narratives (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal; University of Sheffield, UK; Université de Perpignan Via Domitia, France).

Her research seeks to unearth non-canonical figures and narratives in the European fairy-tale tradition, with a focus on neglected women writers, collectors and storytellers. She also has a keen interest in the poetics and politics of adaptation of folk and fairy-tale narratives in contemporary media. She received several scholarships, prizes and awards for her research, including the Women’s Studies Caucus Award (American Association for Italian Studies) and the St. Catharine’s College Prize for Distinction in Research (University of Cambridge). During her research fellowship at Murray Edwards College, she founded the Cambridge Research Network for Fairy-Tale Studies, actively fostering the exchange of ideas in the field across the University of Cambridge and promoting dialogue with international scholars through the organisation of symposia, seminars, workshops and public engagement events. She has organised several high-profile international conferences and has been invited as guest lecturer in various universities in Europe and in the United States. She 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).