Agenda

1. Please provide a brief outline of your training and scientific activity.
My main area of interest is the domain of theoretical linguistics, primarily syntax and the syntax-semantics interface. The language group that has been the main focus of my research so far are Slavic languages, but I have also written about grammatical phenomena pertaining to languages such as English, Romance or Greek, among others. The bulk of my linguistic training took place at the University of Geneva, where I began my studies as an undergraduate and continued as a graduate student, eventually obtaining a doctoral degree under the supervision of Professor Genoveva Puskas. As a PhD student, I worked within a research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), which studied the cross-linguistic properties of the subjunctive mood. The focus of my research in this context was the subjunctive mood in Slavic languages, which was also the topic of my PhD dissertation. As a post-doctoral scholar, I have broadened the scope of my research to include other languages and other grammatical areas as well, such as modality, factivity, or evidentiality, among others.

2. Please state your reasons for choosing Venice and the Department for your research and teaching stay.
The broader reason why I chose Venice University for my visiting stay is because Ca’Foscari is a renowned and well-established institution when it comes to linguistic research, publishing a great number of volumes and hosting many linguistic conferences over the years. The more specific reasons for choosing Ca’Foscari have to do with the fact that I already spent 18 months at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies as a visiting post-doctoral scholar during the years 2018 and 2019, thanks to the grant I obtained from the SNSF. My visiting stay involved a number of fruitful collaborations and interactions with the researchers in place, as well as some limited teaching within the scope of a seminar on Slavic languages taught by Professor Iliyana Krapova. Furthermore, my links with the Department and the University will extend beyond the current visiting stay, because I chose Ca’Foscari as my host institute for the Marie Curie Global Fellowship that has recently been awarded to me by the European Research Commission. Therefore, I hope to remain tied to the University and to the city of Venice for a number of years to come.

3. Have you ever had a research collaboration with the teaching staff of Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies in the past?
As indicated above, I have already spent some time at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies as a visiting post-doctoral researcher in 2018 and 2019. This allowed me to foster a number of contacts and collaborations with the Department’s staff. The most extensive collaboration I established during that time was with Professor Iliyana Krapova, who was the official supervisor of my research project at Ca’Foscari. Our collaboration resulted in a number of joint scientific papers, encyclopedic contributions and a conference presentation. Our joint scientific papers, which are currently under review or in preparation, focus on the syntax and semantics of factivity in South Slavic languages, which is an understudied topic in the literature. My current stay at Ca’Foscari will allow me to deepen my collaboration with Professor Krapova and other researchers at the Department.