A. (Alberto) Godioli, PhD

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. His publications include the books E(n)stranged: Rethinking Defamiliarization in Literature and Visual Culture (ed. with Nilgun Bayraktar, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), Laughter from Realism to Modernism (Routledge, 2015) and La scemenza del mondo (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 close dialogue with Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, Cartooning for Peace and other key actors in the field. In 2021 he was awarded an NWO Vidi Grant for his project 'Humor in Court' (2022-2027). This interdisciplinary project aims to set the basis for a fairer, more consistent approach to humorous content in legal cases concerning freedom of expression and its limits (e.g. defamation, incitement or Intellectual Property infringement), based on insights coming from the humanities and social sciences.

As part of his NWO project, Alberto has published the report Humor and Free Speech: A Comparative Analysis of Global Case Law (with J. Young, Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, Special Collection, 2023) and co-edited the HUMOR special issue Humor and the Law: The Difficulty of Judging Jests (with B. Adriaensen, A. Bricker and T. Laros, 2022). In collaboration with experts from UNESCO, ARTICLE 19 and the African and European Human Rights Courts among others, he is now finalizing a toolkit for judges and online platforms, titled What's in a Joke? Assessing Humor in Free Speech Jurisprudence and Content Moderation (forthcoming, Spring 2025).

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, 2020-2025) and member of the Horizon Europe consortium project 'Democratic Literacy and Humor' (DELIAH, 2025-2029). In addition to humor studies, Law & Humanities and free speech jurisprudence, his research areas also include comparative literature (with a special focus on modernism), posthumanism and narrative theory.

Alberto has supervised (or is currently supervising) PhD projects on a broad range of topics, including humor and free speech jurisprudence, parody and Intellectual Property law, political humor, populist uses of culture, Computer-Generated art and modernist literature. He welcomes supervisions requests in any of these areas, or on other subjects related to his expertise.

Member, Open Council of Europe Academic Networks (OCEAN), 2025 - present
Expert, Global Freedom of Expression (Columbia University), 2023-present
Founder and co-director, Forum for Humor and the Law (forhum.org), 2022-present
Member of the Young Academy Groningen, 2022-present
PhD Board Member (Italian Studies), Ca' Foscari University, Venice, 2022-present
Programme Director, Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL), 2018-present
Board Member, Society for Pirandello Studies, 2018-present