Barbara Tesio-Ryan

Dr Barbara Tesio-Ryan is currently ECDS Postdoctoral Fellow in European Languages in DELC. She has previously worked as Teaching Fellow in Comparative Literature at the University of Edinburgh, where she also completed a PhD in Scandinavian Studies and an MSc in Comparative Literature. Before moving to Edinburgh she was awarded a BA in Literature and Performing Arts at the Sapienza University of Rome. 

Barbara’s research interests include Comparative Literature, Scandinavian Studies, Identity and Cultural mobility, Postcolonial studies, Storytelling, Gothic Studies, Library and Information Science. Barbara is currently working on a comparative study of the use of storytelling and humor in the works of Karen Blixen, Natalia Ginzburg and Tove Jansson. 

Barbara’s PhD thesis, 'Reassessing Karen Blixen’s Gengældelsens Veje/The Angelic Avengers: a Novel Challenging Gender, Totalitarianism and Colonial Practices’ offers a multidimensional and comprehensive reassessment of the Danish author Karen Blixen’s less known works. Blixen’s novel Gengældelsens Veje/The Angelic Avengers is used as a starting point to explore the historical context of publication of the text (Denmark under Nazi occupation), its transmission and reception into the cultural context of post-war United Kingdom and United States, as well as Blixen’s use of gothic genre as a way to subvert the concept of gender, totalitarianism and colonial practices.