Bing Overseas Studies Program

Meet Our Instructors

Faculty in Residence

Each quarter, one Stanford professor serves as Faculty in Residence in each of the BOSP program locations. These faculty teach classes in their own disciplines, developing courses that incorporate unique features of the local culture and environment or that provide comparative perspectives on a particular topic. View a list of current and future faculty.

Local Faculty

Francesco Bagnardi

Francesco Bagnardi

Francesco Bagnardi holds a PhD in Social and Political Science from the European University Institute, Florence and he is currently postdoc researcher at the University of Milan. His work intersects labor and environmental sociology, international political economy, and social movements. His research interests include trade unions and employment relations, labor geographies, workers' mobility, global production networks, and the intersections between class and environmentalist movements.

Francesca Banchi

Francesca Banchi

Francesca Banchi holds a B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Florence, an M.A. in Chinese Language and Culture from the University of Venice, and a second Master’s in Teaching Italian as a Second and Foreign Language. Prior to joining the Breyer Center for Overseas Studies in Florence, Banchi lived in China and taught Italian as a foreign language to Shanghai Jiaotong University students. In her Italian language classes, culture, grammar, and vocabulary are always presented through a communicative approach and the use of teaching materials that are designed and customized for every class.

Nicola Bellini

Nicola Bellini

Nicola Bellini is Professor of Management at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy. He also teaches as visiting professor at the University of Pisa, LUISS in Rome and IULM University in Milan. From 2014 to 2018 he served as Director of the Tourism Management Institute at the La Rochelle Business School in France. From 2009 to 2011 he was the Director of the Regional Institute for the Economic Planning of Tuscany – IRPET. From 2007 to 2014 he was Director of the Galileo Galilei Italian Institute in Chongqing (PRC) and Co-Director of the Confucius Institute in Pisa. He also served as an expert for the EU Commission on Regional strategies for smart specialization (2012-2016) and on Sustainable urban tourism (2022). He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on industrial policy, local and regional development, place branding, and tourism.

Nunzia Borrelli

Nunzia Borrelli is a Professor in Spatial Sociology at the Università Degli Studi Milano Bicocca.  She has conducted field research projects pertaining to governance, food, ecomuseums, museums in Italy, UK, USA, and China. She was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in 2022 where she investigated the current worldviews of relevant stakeholders about the role of museums in food systems sustainability. She was a Fulbright scholar at Loyola University of Chicago where she conducted research at the Field Museum, Chicago. She was also a visiting researcher at Portland State University, and at University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) where she worked with Professor Peter Davis on community-based heritage projects. At Xiamen University (China) she worked with Professor Rongling Ge on ecomuseums in China. She has published several academic papers and three books.

Deborah Bottazzi

Deborah Bottazzi holds a B.A. in Teaching Italian Language and Culture to Foreigners, an M.A. in Textual Skills for Publishing, Teaching and Tourism Promotion, and a second Master’s in Teaching Italian as a Second and Foreign Language. She also holds a DITALS certification, levels I and II, issued by the Università per Stranieri di Siena. She collaborates with the Center for CILS (certificate of Italian as a Second Language) and has worked in private schools teaching English and Italian. Her teaching philosophy rests upon the idea that in the classroom each student, regardless of their level and ability, finds a motivating space where to improve their language and communication skills before bringing them in their everyday life and interaction with the Italians. 

Ermelinda M. Campani

Ermelinda M. Campani

Ermelinda M. Campani is the Spogli Family Director of Stanford's Breyer Center for Overseas Studies in Florence. A native of Emilia Romagna (Italy), she earned an M.A. in Italian literature and a Ph.D. with an emphasis in film studies from Brown University. Prior to joining Stanford University in 1993, she taught courses both at Brown and Rhode Island School of Design and served as acting director of the Brown University Program in Bologna. She has been teaching film to Stanford undergraduates since 1993. Her teaching and research focus on film history and criticism, film style and interpretation, film culture, modernism and film, feminist film theory. Her published works include a book on Bernardo Bertolucci, one on cinema and the sacred (translated into French in 2007), and a book on cinema's representations of the human body. She has written articles both on European and US film journals, has contributed entries to the encyclopedia of World Cinema and has lectured widely. Her current research revolves around iconology and the film image.

Veronica De Romanis

Veronica De Romanis teaches European Economics at Stanford University (The Breyer Center for Overseas Studies) in Florence and at Luiss in Rome (Department of Political Science, School of Government and MBA Program). She is advisor to the Minister of Economy and Finance on the Reform of the European Economic Governance. She is a Member of the “Osservatorio per I Conti Pubblici” in the Cattolica University in Milan. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of the “Giubileo 2025 in Confindustria”  and of the Think Tank of Unindustria (Roma Lazio). She is a Member of the International Committee of the Board of WE Women Empower the World and she is in the listing of “100esperte.it”. In July 2019, she was awarded with the Prize Profilo Donna. She was an Independent Director of the Board of Cementir Holding Spa and President of the Risks Committee and Member of the Compensation Committee and Sustainability Committee of Cementir Holding (Rome) from 2015 to 2023. She was a Member of the Council of Economic Advisors at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, from 1996 to 2008, focusing on macroeconomics and public finance. She was also in charge of the interaction with Eurostat, the European Commission, OECD and the IMF. She regularly writes on Italian and European Economic Policy in several Newspapers, websites and magazines. She published “Il Metodo Merkel”, (2009, Marsilio editori), “Il Caso Germania”, (2013, Marsilio editori) and “L’Austerità fa Crescere” (2017, Marsilio Editori). She studied economics at La Sapienza University in Rome (Bachelor Degree in Economics cum Laude) and Columbia University in New York (PhD Course), where she obtained an MA and MPhil in Economics.  

Dario Donetti

Dario Donetti

Dario Donetti  holds an M.Arch. from the Università degli Studi di Firenze (2008) and a Ph.D. from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2016) and is currently assistant professor of architectural history at the University of Verona. Previously, he served as an academic assistant at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (2013-2019), a research associate at the Italian Academy of Columbia University (2017), and a collegiate assistant professor at the University of Chicago (2019-2022). The primary goal of his research is to understand the interdependence between draftsmanship and architectural production, with a focus on issues of authorship and materiality. Among the results of his studies are the exhibition catalog Giuliano da Sangallo: Disegni degli Uffizi (Giunti: 2017, coauthored with Sabine Frommel and Marzia Faietti) and the monograph Francesco da Sangallo e l’identità dell’architettura toscana (Officina Libraria: 2020). Donetti is also the editor of the volumes Architecture and Dystopia (Actar: 2019) and Building with Paper: The Materiality of Renaissance Architectural Drawings (Brepols: 2021, with Cara Rachele).

Natacha Fabbri

Natacha Fabbri holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, a M.A. in philosophy from the University of Pisa, a M.A. in piano performance from the Conservatory of Music of Florence, and a national habilitation as associate professor in history of science. She was postdoctoral fellow at the universities of Pisa, Florence, Los Angeles, at the International Balzan Prize Foundation and at I Tatti – The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She is currently in charge of some research projects at the Museo Galileo and is scientific coordinator and chief editor of the area “Science” for the Cultural Digital Ecosystem of Tuscany. Her research interests include Renaissance and modern philosophy and science, history of astronomy, the relationship between music and science, gender in science. 

She is author of numerous articles on history of science and of three monographs: Cosmologia e armonia in Kepler e Mersenne (Olschki 2003); De l’utilité de l’harmonie. Filosofia, musica e scienza in Mersenne, Descartes e Galileo (Edizioni della Normale 2008); Profili di donne sulla Luna. Riflessi di filosofia, scienza e letteratura (Edizioni della Normale 2022). She acted as co-editor of the book Copernicus Banned. The Entangled Matter of the anti-Copernican Decree of 1616 (Olschki 2018).

Ali Aydin Karamustafa

Ali Aydin Karamustafa

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Ali Aydin Karamustafa is a historian of the Ottoman and Safavid worlds, and his research focuses on oral and written traditions concerning origins, conquest, legitimacy, and rebellion which were produced and circulated by political communities from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries across Eurasia. He received his PhD from Stanford in 2020 and currently works and resides in Bologna, Italy.

Marie Moïse

Marie Moïse

Marie Moïse holds a B.A. in History from the University of Milan, an M.A. in Gender Studies from the University of Paris 7, and a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from the University of Padua and Toulouse 2, with a dissertation entitled, Not yet a woman, no longer completely a man. An afrofeminist reading of political subjectivation in Frantz Fanon. Her research focuses on the intersectionality of gender, race, class and political subjectivation. Currently she is a research collaborator at the University of Innsbruck within the project Research as Vocality. Tracing the African Presence in Naples. She has co-authored several collections of feminist and afrofeminist essays and short stories such as: Introduzione ai femminismi (Derive Approdi, Roma 2019), Féminismes dans le monde. 23 récits d’une révolution planétaire (Textuel, Paris 2020), and Future. Il domani narrato dalle voci di oggi (Effequ, Firenze 2019). She also translated into Italian, Contesting Race and Citizenship. Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean by Camilla Hawthorne (Astarte Edizioni 2023), Where We Stand. Class Matters by bell hooks (Tamu Edizioni 2022), and Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis (Edizioni Alegre 2018).

Massimo Montanari

Massimo Montanari

Massimo Montanari is Professor Emeritus of the University of Bologna, where he founded the Master’s Program “Food history and culture”. His research interests include several aspects of medieval agrarian economy and society; particularly relevant to his studies on food history. He has published extensively on these topics and his work has been translated and published all over the world.  Montanari has taught seminars and lectured in Europe, Japan, Canada, the United States and South America.   

Among his many publications are The Culture of Food, Oxford UK - Cambridge USA, Blackwell, 1994 (paperback 1996). Food: A Culinary History, New York, Columbia University Press, 1999. Penguin Books, 2000 (edited with J.L. Flandrin). Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, New York, Columbia University Press, 2003 (with A. Capatti). Food is Culture, New York, Columbia University Press, 2006. Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb. New York, Columbia University Press, 2010; Let the Meatballs Rest. New York, Columbia University Press, 2012; A cultural History of Food in the Medieval Age (editor), London-New York, Berg, 2012 [A cultural history of food, volume 2]; Italian Identity in Cooking, New York, Columbia University Press, 2013; Tastes of the Middle Ages. Food, cooking and the table, New York, Columbia University Press, 2014; A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, New York, Europa editions, 2019.

Tommaso Mozzati

Tommaso Mozzati is Associate Professor in the Dipartimento di Lettere at the University of Perugia. He is a specialist of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian sculpture and has published widely on that and related topics, including Early Modern visual culture and the art market; the representation of the nude in Italy from Brunelleschi to Giambologna and the European trade of marbles during the Cinquecento, from Carrara, to Genova, to France, Spain and England. He is also interested in the use of Renaissance art along XIX and XX centuries, including the critical reception of figures such as Perugino, Michelangelo, Cellini. He has curated several exhibitions, including I grandi bronzi del Battistero. Rustici e Leonardo, at the Museo nazionale del Bargello (2010-11), Norma e capriccio. Spagnoli in Italia agli esordi della 'maniera moderna' at the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence (2013), Spagna e Italia in dialogo nell'Europa del Cinquecento at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi (2018), and Un mare tutto fresco di colore. Sandro Penna e le arti figurative at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria (2023). Previously he was a fellow of the Italian Academy – Columbia University, Villa I Tatti The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid.

Fiorenza Quercioli 

(on leave)

Fiorenza Quercioli 

Fiorenza Quercioli holds a degree in Modern Languages from the University of Florence and an M.A. in Teaching Italian as a Second/Foreign Language from the University of Venice. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Florence in 2011. Quercioli joined the Breyer Center for Overseas Studies in Florence in 1997, after teaching experiences with both international and American college students. She has served as a teacher trainer for both public and private institutions and, since 2003, she has been tutoring graduate students enrolled in the University of Venice’s M.A. Program in Teaching Italian as a Second/Foreign Language.

Quercioli has published several articles relating to the teaching and acquisition of Italian as a second/foreign language, as well as didactic material. She has co-authored an Italian language manual for intermediate students entitled "L’Italiano all’Università" (Edilingua, Roma, 2013) and more recently an Italian language manual for beginners, “In alto! - A1” (Ornimi Editions, Athens, 2020) and “In alto! - A2” (Ornimi Editions, Athens, 2021).

Serena Rovai

Serena Rovai

Serena Rovai is Director of the Europe-Asia Centre for Management and Innovation at and the doctoral Trium DBA program Grenoble Ecole de Management. She is also Director of the MSc in Fashion, Design and Luxury Management for GEM’s Grenoble and London Campuses. Rovai’s expertise focuses on the Chinese Market and new client attitudes and cultural behavior. She previously served as Director of the Uni-Italia Centre in Beijing - a joint venture between the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that of Education and the Chinese Embassy – focusing on innovation and the internationalization of universities and academic institutions in Asia with a specific focus on Luxury and Art. She holds a doctoral degree in Business Administration and has taught at the University of International Business and Economics – UIBE - in Beijing. In the past, she designed and delivered executive training programs for Fortune 500 clients and international institutions. She currently conducts research on Chinese Business and Management at the Tongji University Glorad Research Centre and chairs academic conferences and forums. Her work has been published widely in management and scientific journals such as the International Journal of Human Resources Development, IO Management Magazine, and Economia e Management (SDA Bocconi University).

Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau'

Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau’

Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau’ received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University of Padua with a dissertation entitled, Why don't you bring them to your home? Stories of hospitality between refugees and locals. In her work, she explores racism and anti-racism, attempting in research to make explicit the link between daily practices and systems of domination. Currently, Dr Ghebremariam Tesfau’ is lecturer at UniverMantova, the university foundation of Mantua. She is also a member of the board of Refugees Welcome, an association committed to welcoming refugees into local families, and is an expert for the antiracist association, Razzismo Brutta Storia.

Lorenzo Vigotti

Lorenzo Vigotti received a M.Arch. from the University of Florence, Italy, and a Ph.D. in architectural history from Columbia University. His research focuses on private architecture between the 14th and the 15th century, with an emphasis on the architectural and social origin of the Renaissance palace using domestic inventories, and the circulation of architectural knowledge between medieval Persia and Italy. 

Lorenzo has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the European Union, NEH, the Kress and Mellon Foundations, the Society of the Architectural Historians, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio. He taught courses on Western architecture and urban planning at Columbia, NYU, Pratt Institute, University of Utah, Union College, and University of Bologna.  He has also participated in digital humanities projects at Avery Library (Columbia), the Medici Archive Project, and the Uffizi Gallery.