Loredana Polezzi is Alfonse M. D’Amato Chair in Italian American and Italian Studies at Stony Brook University (USA) and Honorary Professor of Translation Studies at Cardiff University (UK). Her research interests combine translation and transnational Italian studies. She has written on travel writing, colonial and postcolonial literature, translingualism and migration. Her current work focuses on memory, mobility and translation in transatlantic Italian cultures. She is co-editor of The Translator and of the book series 'Transnational Modern Languages' (Liverpool University Press). Her recent publications include (also as co-editor) the special issue of Forum Italicum ‘Critical Issues in Transnational Italian Studies’ (57:2, 2023) and the volumes Creatività Diasporiche. Conversazioni transnazionali tra teoria e arti (2023), Transcultural Italies: Mobility, Memory and Translation (2020), and Transnational Italian Studies (2020). She is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and a previous president of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).

In participating in the project The "Foreign Gaze": Processes of Transculturation in Contemporary European Literatures and Arts it is her intention to focus on the idea of ​​the 'return journey' and the 'return gaze' that accompanies it. Her intervention will focus on the ambiguous notions and figurations of otherness/belonging that characterize the gaze of those who return, especially where the path includes nodes, positions and places characterized by diasporic and/or postcolonial histories. Her contribution will take into consideration narrative and visual art, as well as the dialogue that often occurs between the two.