I was born and raised in San Francisco, California and graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in Italian in 1983. I have been in Europe off and on since 1976 and I completed a year abroad  in Florence with SFSU studying Italian literature, history of the cinema, Etruscology and History of the Risorgimento. While teaching English and studying at the Università degli Studi di Bologna (corsi singoli) in 1984/85, I also completed the Royal Society of Arts Diploma in Teaching English to Adults.

I started teaching English at the Università degli Studi di Lecce, now Università del Salento, in November of 1988, and have been here ever since. I completed an M.Ed in teaching English to adults at the University of Sheffield (UK) with a thesis on autonomy and the language learner in Italian universities.

My interests are teacher training, autonomy in language learning and translation studies. Starting in 2012, I took part in the Tandem Language Exchange (teletandem) with Virginia Commonwealth University (USA) and then with Indiana University in the fall of 2017. I hope to renew this exhilarating experience in the near future as it is definitely a great way to improve one's language skills.

I° anno Inglese lettrice madre lingua nel corso di

Prof. Thomas Christiansen L-LIN/12 Lingua e Traduzione lingua inglese I