Alba Rosa SURIANO
She graduated in Literature (Oriental Studies) in 2005 from the University of Florence, with a thesis on Arabic language and literature, and obtained her PhD in Mediterranean Languages and Cultures from the University of Florence, with a thesis entitled ‘Independent Theatre in Egypt from 1990 to the present day: birth, evolution and prospects’. She has participated in several national and international conferences (Wocmes, Euramal, UEAI, ISFNR, Sesamo, ASAI) with contributions on modern and contemporary Arabic theatre. She is a member of several study societies in the field (IPOCAN, UEAI, Euramal, Sesamo, ASAI, Cosmica). She has carried out field research missions aimed at finding primary and secondary sources for research projects such as those of the ‘Arab Modernity’ group, ‘The Roman and Eastern Middle Ages: geocriticism and interpretation of Alessandro's novels’, ‘Discrimination and the unspeakable in China, Egypt and Japan’, “The Wind of EROS”, “Narrating the Environment between East and West”. From December 2011 to November 2019, she was a TD researcher in Arabic Language and Literature, and from November 2019 to the present, she has been an associate professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Special Teaching Facility in Ragusa and the Department of Humanities.
The field of research is modern and contemporary Arabic literature, specifically theatre and dramaturgy. Over the years, he has addressed various topics involving interdisciplinary research groups and also connected to other Italian and foreign universities. He is part of the Medieval Romance and Oriental research group, with which he has dealt with both the Romance of Alexander in contemporary Arabic drama and the theme of Eros in contemporary and medieval Arabic authors. He was part of the research group on Arab modernity in literature and, specifically, in Egyptian drama. In 2025, she was a visiting researcher at LACNAD (INALCO) in Paris, conducting research on contemporary Tunisian and Moroccan dramaturgy. She translated the work “al-Farafir” (1964) by Egyptian writer Yusuf Idris, a masterpiece in the history of Egyptian theatre. She translated the novel “On the Greenwich Meridian” (2019) by Egyptian author Shady Lewis. She is one of the leading experts on Egyptian independent theatre, on which she has written a monograph.