Luigi Marfè is an associate professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature (COMP-01/A) at the University of Padua, where he is chair of the BA programme in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Studies, serves as a tutor for the Scuola Galileiana di Studi Superiori, and is on the faculty of the PhD Programme Dottorato in Scienze Linguistiche, Filologiche e Letterarie.
He graduated from the University of Turin in 2005, where he received a PhD in Comparative Literature and Cultures in 2008. From 2009 to 2016, he worked in other Italian Universities (Turin, Parma, Siena) on research projects on cultural translation in early modern Europe, on contemporary travel writing and on 19th-century speculative fiction. From 2017 to 2023, he was a lecturer (Rtda and Rtdb) at the University of Padua.
He is a member of international scientific associations. He serves as chair of the research committee on travel writing of the European Society of Comparative Literature, and was in the executive committee of the research centre “Arti della Modernità” (2016-2022). He held lectures in many foreign universities (such as Oxford and Cambridge). In 2024 he was a visiting professor at the Universidad de Granada; in 2025 at the Univerzita Karlova (Prague).
He wrote the monographs “Oltre la fine dei viaggi” (Olschki 2009; shortlisted for the “Premio Pen-Compiano 2010”), “Introduzione alle teorie narrative” (ArchetipoLibri 2011), “In English Clothes. La novella italiana in Inghilterra: politica e poetica della traduzione” (Accademia 2015), “Un altro modo di raccontare. Poetiche e percorsi della fotoletteratura” (Olschki 2021; shortlisted for the “Premio Nabokov 2022”), “Effetto Faust” (Mimesis 2025).
He edited the volumes “Poteri della lettura. Pratiche, immagini, supporti” (PUP 2024), “La memoria degli oggetti” (Mimesis 2023), “Morphology and Historical Sequence” (“Cosmo: Comparative Studies in Modernism” 2021), “Reading Shakespeare and the Classics” (Dell'Orso 2021), “Borders of the Visible” (“Cosmo”, 2018-2019, 2 vols.), “Profezia e disincanto” (Mesogea 2013), “Sulle strade del viaggio” (Mimesis 2012), “Classico/moderno” (Mesogea 2011).
He was a member of many research groups funded in competitive calls (Prin 2022; Bird UniPd 2019; Compagnia di San Paolo 2011; PRIN 2008 and 2006). As part of a Prin project, he is coordinating a research group that is working on the “Claudio Magris and Marisa Madieri” archival collection at Archivio Bonsanti in Florence.
He translated into Italian literary works from English, French and Spanish, such as William Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” (Bompiani 2015), Nicolas Bouvier’s “Le Dehors et le Dedans” (ETS 2012), R.L. Stevenson's “Songs of Travel” (ETS 2019), Adrián Giménez Hutton’s “La Patagonia de Chatwin” (Nutrimenti 2015), and William Morris’s “Icelandic Journey” (Amos 2025). He is working on an Italian edition of Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” for Mondadori, in the “Meridiani” series.
He has contributed to many Italian and international academic journals. He serves on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed academic journals “Cosmo: Comparative Studies in Modernism” and “The International Journal of Literary Humanities”, and of the literary studies series “Medusa” (Edizioni dell'Orso). He writes reviews for “L’Indice dei Libri” and has worked for a book series on “Grandi Miti Greci” for “Corriere della Sera”.

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