11 December, 6pm

ICI London with Andrea Brondino, Hallsworth Research Fellow at the University of Manchester

Umberto Eco, Ten Years On: A Dialogue

With Margherita Ganeri (University of Calabria), Emanuela Patti (University of Edinburgh), Ian Thomson (author and professor at the University of East Anglia).

Chaired by Marco Ruggieri (UCL)

We are delighted to support the event ‘Umberto Eco, Ten Years On: A Dialogue’ that will take place at the Italian Cultural Institute of London on the 11th of December.

Umberto Eco has been, and perhaps continues to be, one of the most influential Italian intellectuals globally. Even before (and certainly after) the publication of his 1980 best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, the name ‘Umberto Eco’ has worked almost as a brand, spreading the interest for Italian culture and language across countries. Before his death in 2016, Eco famously ‘prohibited’ conferences about his work for a period of 10 years; for this reason, 2026 has featured several publications, events, and seminars discussing Eco’s work in different countries.

The expert speakers involved will discuss critically the varied legacy of Umberto Eco’s work as a writer and intellectual. They will address questions such as: what made Umberto Eco one of the defining intellectuals of his time, and does that status still hold today? What has been Eco’s impact in promoting Italian culture abroad? And what can Eco still teach us about culture, politics, interpretation, and the circulation of ideas? The aim is to understand whether Eco and his ideas can still be relevant for (what is left of) the 21st century and its specific cultural and social challenges.

Book your place HERE

Margherita Ganeri is a Full Professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Calabria, where she is also the founding director of the Seminar Italian Diaspora Studies. Her research interests focus on Italian and Italian diasporic literature in the 19th and 20th centuries and on related issues of literary criticism and theory. Receiver of two Fulbright fellowships, she was appointed visiting professor at several Universities, including Cambridge, Stony Brook and Chicago.

Emanuela Patti is Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her research and teaching explore the intersections of literature, media, cultural studies, and cultural history. Among her publications are Opera aperta. Italian electronic literature from the 1960s to the present (Peter Lang, 2022), runner-up for the 2023 Katherine N. Hayles Award, and Pasolini after Dante (Routledge, 2016; Italian edition Divina Mimesis, Carocci, 2025). She also co-edited, with Clodagh Brook, Transmedia. Storia, memoria e narrazioni attraverso i media (Mimesis, 2015) and is co-editing, with Massimo Riva, The Digital Turn in Italian Studies (Peter Lang, forthcoming 2027).

Ian Thomson is an author, biographer, translator, and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and in the 1980s he worked in Rome as a teacher, translator, journalist and writer. He contributes regularly to the national broadsheets and weekly magazines (including the Observer, Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator). His biography of Primo Levi, Primo Levi: A Life (2002), took 10 years to write and won the Royal Society of Literature’s W.H.Heinemann Award. Ian Thomson has translated the Sicilian crime writer and essayist Leonardo Sciascia into English, and edited Articles of Faith: The Collected Tablet Journalism of Graham Greene (2006). His latest book, Dante’s Divine Comedy (2019), reflects a lifelong interest in Italy. He is currently working on a book about his mother’s birthplace in the Baltic during World War II.

Marco Ruggieri is Associate Lecturer in Italian at UCL. His research centres on questions of identity in contemporary Italian culture, literature and media. He has worked on major authors including Umberto Eco, Antonio Gramsci, and C. E. Gadda. His most recent postdoctoral project (Edinburgh) examined questions of gender and national identity in Southern Italy. He is also Website and Social Media Co-ordinator for the Society for Italian Studies, General Editor (Publicity) of Forum for Modern Language Studies, and a contributor on Scottish politics to the Italian newpaper Il Manifesto.

Andrea Brondino is Hallsworth Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. He is working on the 3-year postdoctoral project ‘IConN: Italian Conspiracy Narratives Across Media and Borders (2001-present)’, analysing how mainstream media and culture represent and disseminate conspiracy thinking in Italy and on a transnational scale. His first book is titled Narrative and History in the Works of Umberto Eco, Carlo Ginzburg, and Wu Ming: Untangling the Strands. He published on topics such as irony, the reception of the Apocalypse, Italian and North American fiction. He occasionally writes book reviews for Doppiozero and La Balena Bianca.

Important: Welcome to Our New Venue

IIC is excited to welcome you to their new venue and can’t wait to see you at the event.

To help make entry as quick and easy as possible, please note:
• Each ticket must be booked in the attendee’s full name (first name, middle name(s), and last name), exactly as it appears on their government-issued ID.
• A valid government-issued photo ID is required for entry.
• Arrive at least 30 minutes before the event starts.
• Read our new entry requirements’ guide carefully: HERE

Checking these details before you arrive will help IIC welcome everyone efficiently and ensure you can enjoy the event without unnecessary delays.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. We look forward to welcoming you and hope you have a fantastic time.