Staff members with discipline Literary Theory & Criticism
Academia develops at the interface of different fields. This is one reason why the University of Groningen is home to a wide range of fields, each with a great number of subject specialists. The overview below, which is based on a standard categorization of fields, will help you find the right expert for each field. If you cannot find the expert you are looking for in this list, try searching via a related field or faculty; you may find him or her there.





My research focuses on non-anthropocentric conceptualizations of animality and general nonhumanity in Italian modernist literature. I build on Herman’s (2011) remodelling of Modernism through the lens of Enactivism, but instead of looking at themes and contents, I prefer to study the texts through a Neo-Formalist perspective (Levine 2015), meaning that the core of my studies points at the formal narrative innovations produced by Italian Modernism. The aim is to identify the forms used to represent nonhumanity and its relationship with humanity, so to offer new tools to represent them in today’s literature. Accordingly, I employ theories drawn from Posthumanism, Ecocriticism, Animal Studies and New Materialism, so to combine an innovative take on forms and an undertheorized topic such as nonhumanity in Italian literature.
The authors I currently have under examination are Carlo Emilio Gadda and Luigi Pirandello.



Alberto Godioli is Associate Professor in European Culture and Literature at the University of Groningen, and Programme Director of the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL). He obtained his PhD in 2012 from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa; from 2013 to 2015 he was a Newton International Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
His main research field is humor and satire across media. He has authored the monographs Laughter from Realism to Modernism (Oxford: Legenda / Routledge, 2015) and La scemenza del mondo (Pisa: ETS, 2011, Edinburgh Gadda First Prize), as well as several articles and book chapters on theories and practices of humor from the 18th century to the present.
His current work focuses on humor and free speech jurisprudence, in dialogue with stakeholders such as Columbia Global Freedom of Expression and Cartoonists' Rights Network International. In 2021 he was awarded an NWO Vidi Grant for his project 'Humor in Court' (original title 'Forensic Humor Analysis', 2022-2027). This interdisciplinary project aims to set the basis for a fairer, more consistent approach to humor in legal cases concerning freedom of expression, based on insights coming from humanities-based humor research.
Alberto is also the founder and co-director of the Forum for Humor and the Law (ForHum) and of the OSL research group Literature, Law and Society, as well as the Principal Investigator of the NETIAS Constructive Advanced Thinking project 'Cartoons in Court' (main host: Institute for Advanced Study CEU Budapest, 2020-2023). His research areas also include Modernism, Law and Literature, Posthumanism, Narrative Theory and Cognitive Literary Studies.





Populism in France and the Netherlands
Culture and identity politics
Gender studies

Drama
Morality and literature, law and literature
Literary, cultural, and media theory
Literature and music

Digital Film Forensics / Videographic criticism
Complex cinema, puzzle films

Literature and Film; Literary Theory; Visual Studies; Documentary Film; Film Theory
Sociology; Discourse Theory; Systems Theory
Self-Referentiality; Aesthetic Negativity

She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Spanish: Language and Literatures from the University of Alicante and a Master's Degree in Art, Literature and Culture from the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 2016, she was awarded a Collaboration Grant by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport to conduct a study about the limits of fiction in literature. She obtained her PhD in Art, Literature and Culture in 2020 from the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) (Cum Laude Distinction and International Mention). Her research was funded from 2017 to 2020 with a research grant provided by the José Luis de Oriol-Catalina de Urquijo Foundation. Gemma carries out multidisciplinary research in Humanities, Literary Theory, Cognitive Sciences, and Communication.
In addition, she is a member of the Communication [Poetics and Rhetoric] Research Group (C [P y R]) and a foundational member of the Spanish Society of Rhetoric [Se-Ret].







Qualitative communication support for written and spoken English.
University-wide Language and Culture Policy. Inclusion.
ENLIGHT.

Literary Theory


I'm Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project GOLEM (Graphs and Ontologies for Literary Evolution Models).
I'm also a member of the scientific advisory board of OPERAS (the Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities in the European Research Area) and Vice President of IGEL (the International Society of the Empirical Study of Literature).



Postcolonial literatures and theory
Memory studies
Postsocialist and postcolonial studies
South African literature and culture




In 2019, she was awarded two competitive prizes from international and national academic associations: the Emory Elliott Prize by the International American Studies Association (IASA) at the IX IASA World Congress and the Amy J. Elias Founder's Award by the Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP). Her research has been supported by institutions including Brown University, Harvard University, Princeton University, The English Institute, the American Association of Geographers, the Huntington Library, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.
Schnepf offers courses and supervises graduate work in the areas of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American studies, literature, gender and women’s studies, STS, and surveillance studies. Recent courses include "Domestic Cultures of US Imperialism"; “Computers and US Culture”; “Domestic Disturbances”; “Reading Minds”; and “Imagining Media.”
Before joining the Groningen faculty, Schnepf was the 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Associate for the Project on Gender in the Global Community (GGC) Seminar "Gender and Security" at Princeton University and a Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program. She also mentored first-generation, low-income students as a SIFP Faculty Fellow. Prior to her Princeton lectureship, she served as a Lecturer in the History & Literature concentration at Harvard University where she also co-directed the Novel Theory Across the Disciplines seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Brown University.


His research deals primarily with the "Humanities", "Social Sciences", "Communication", "Computational Literary Studies", "Cultural Analytics" and "Technology", and the notions of "Culture, Literature and Crisis" from a multidisciplinary transnational perspective. He is an expert on "Cultural Narratives" and "Conceptual Metaphors". He carries out multidisciplinary research with particular emphasis on Digital Humanities, Artificial Intelligence, University Innovation, Data Science, Applied Physics, Social Sciences and Cognitive Sciences.
Professor Valdivia is a reviewer and editor of more than a dozen international top scientific journals and book series; the leading researcher of ConnectU in the Erasmus+ INNOVALAB project (European Commission) and an expert reviewer and independent rapporteur of European Commission research projects, among many other international scientific activities and recognitions (see CV). Besides, he regularly advises governments worldwide on Research, Educational Innovation, Higher Education, Science, Technology and Social Affairs.
From 2014 to 2018, Valdivia was President of the Steering Committee of the H2020 European Commission Excellent Science Marie Curie RISE project "Cultural Narratives of Crisis and Renewal (CRIC)" project; from 2016 to 2018 he was Director of the "Research Centre Arts in Society" (AiS University of Groningen), and he founded, in 2019, the "Research Centre for the Study of Democratic Cultures and Politics" (DemCP University of Groningen). From 2017 to 2018, Valdivia was Finance Officer CLLiP Programmes (Cultures, Literatures, Linguistics, Politics). In 2018, Prof. Dr Pablo Valdivia was awarded "Lecturer of the Year" Faculty of Arts (University of Groningen). From 2020 to 2022, Professor Valdivia was a Fellow in University Innovation at LASPAU (affiliated with Harvard University). In 2022, LASPAU (affiliated with Harvard University) received the PIEoneer Global Award for the Best Public/Private Partnership under the Program "Innovation in Teaching" to which Professor Valdivia contributed throughout his LASPAU Fellowship.
Currently, Valdivia supervises 13 PhD and 3 Postdoc research projects.
IMPORTANT!! I DO NOT ACCEPT NEW PHD CANDIDATES. MY SUPERVISION CAPACITY IS FULLY BOOKED FOR 2023 AND 2024! PLEASE, DO NOT CONTACT ME IF YOU WANT TO DO A PHD WITH ME UNTIL SEPTEMBER 2025! THANKS FOR YOUR COLLABORATION!!!
Current PhD Supervision
PhD Candidate Melissa Luypaers, 'Humor, Discrimination and Free Speech Jurisprudence: A Law-and-Humanities Approach'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Bianca Ramírez, ‘Yo sentía que no estábamos solos. Sensorial Perception and its Role in the Experience of Former Detenidos-Desaparecidos’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Dr Florian Lippert, Dr Konstantin Mierau and Dr Ksenia Robbe daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate Alessandro di Laurentis, ‘Personaggio, interiorita e tragico nelle novelle di Tozzi e Pirandello’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Beer Prakken, 'Not Just a Joke: On Humour, Polarisation and Responsibility'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia and Professor Dr Bart Streumer main supervisors, Dr Daphne Brandenburg and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate María Isabel Marín, 'Can an AI-Enabled System Help Us Understand How Cultural Narratives Are Configured and How Do They Prime Social Mobilization? A Machine Learning Model for Automatic Detection of the Regime(s) of Conceptual Metaphor'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Macr Esteve del Valle daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Teun Joshua Brandt, 'Symbiotic Narratives: Contested Agencies in Scientific and Literary Accounts of Human Holobiants'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Dr Florian Lippert, Dr Vera Alexander and Dr Fred Keijzer daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate Rosmery-Ann Boegeholz, ‘The ‘Mirror Syndrome’ as a response to the Beauty Influencers on Instagram: Problems and Effects of the excessive use of images by young university women’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Marc Esteve del Valle and Dr Javier Muñoz Basols daily supervisors.
PhD Candidate Juan Gallego Benot, 'How did rhetorical invention in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation shape a conflicting idea of Modernity? An analysis of the discursive construction of a new European society'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia and Professor Dr Tomás Albaladejo main supervisors and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Gonzalo Albornoz, ‘Fictional Representations of Law, Legality and Justice in Popular Mass Media and the Construction of Legal Knowledge by Key Communities in the Prison Environment’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Konstantin Mierau daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Elizabeth Duarte, ‘Twittering for Peace? The Construction of Meaning and Otherness in Digital Media representations of the Colombian Peace Process’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Konstantin Mierau daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Rose Smith, ‘Identifying the Role of Museums in Central European Post-Communist Nations in the Construction of the Global Memory of Communism’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Ksenia Robbe daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Klára Kosova, ‘The Role of Economic Elites in the Foreign Policy-Making Process: The Case of Bulgaria’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Lisa Gaufman daily supervisor.
PhD Candidate Leonardo Arriagada, ‘CG-Art. An aesthetic discussion of the relationship between artistic creativity and computation’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Dr Florian Lippert and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisors.
Current Post-Doc Supervision
Dr Matteo Fiori, 'Humour in Court' (NWO VIDI Grant, 2022-2027, PI Dr Alberto Godioli). Prof Dr Pablo Valdivia and Dr Alberto Godioli supervisors.
Dr Jennifer Young, 'Humour in Court (NWO VIDI Grant, 2022-2027, PI Dr Alberto Godioli). Prof Dr Pablo Valdivia and Dr Alberto Godioli supervisors.
Dr Dimitris Soudias, 'Welfare Visions 2.0: Future-Making Practices in the Social Economies of Amsterdam, Athens and Berlin'. Prof Dr Pablo Valdivia and Dr Florian Lippert supervisors.
Completed PhD Supervision and Postdoc
PhD Ruby de Vos, ‘Living with Toxicity: Mapping the Toxic in Contemporary Culture’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Vera Alexander daily supervisor.
PhD Judith Jansma, ‘From Submission to Soumission: Populists’ perspectives on culture’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor, Professor Dr Lars Rensmann and Dr Alberto Godioli daily supervisors.
PhD Juan del Valle, ‘Imagining the Unpredictable: Communication, Power and Technology in José Ricardo Morales’ Transnational Theatre’. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor and Dr Konstantin Mierau daily supervisor.
PhD Cristian Crusat, ‘La construction de la biographie imaginaire’. Professor Ieme van der Poel (University of Amsterdam) and Dr Pablo Valdivia (University of Amsterdam) co-supervisors.
PhD David Martínez Antón, ‘La teoría de la transducción literaria. Hacia una teoría dialógica de la obra literaria’. Professor Tomás Albaladejo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and Dr Pablo Valdivia (University of Amsterdam) co-supervisors.
Dr Omar Alcántara, 'Adolescence, Gender and Violence in the Bildungsroman and the Road movies: from Goethe to Alfonso Cuarón'. Professor Dr Pablo Valdivia main supervisor.

Her research is focused on cognitive approaches to children's literature. Her PhD was on empathy, ethics and justice construction children's war literature. Her current project is on the impact and complexity of contrasting truth narratives in children's literature. She has presented her research at many international conferences and through several peer reviewed publications.




Victorian Literature and Culture
Neo-Victorian Literatre / contemporary appropriations of 19th century literature
Literary Theory
Postmodernism
Word and Music Studies




