About
I am a scholar, writer, and public speaker with expertise in contemporary literature and culture. Below you can read more about me and see a short CV.
Read about
Dr Diletta De Cristofaro

I am a scholar, based between Northumbria University in the UK and Politecnico di Milano in Italy, and a culture writer.
I write cultural criticism, both scholarly and for a general audience. I’m particularly interested in fiction, non-fiction, film, TV, and digital culture responding to twenty-first-century anxieties and crises. My research considers what stories about real or perceived crises tell us about our society, our sense of self, and of time. My essays and criticism have appeared in publications ranging from Salon, The Week, RTÉ, The Conversation, and Post45 Contemporaries, to Parallax, ASAP/J, Critique, and boundary 2 online.
I am also a public speaker and contribute to literary and science festivals, such as Durham Book Festival, the European Researchers Night, and the Being Human Festival.
I am an expert in the apocalyptic imagination. My book on the topic, The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel: Critical Temporalities and the End Times, is out with Bloomsbury. In this book, reviewed as “a landmark study of 21st century fiction” and “a theoretical tour de force”, I offer a critical model for our cultural obsession with the end by focussing on the significance of time in the 21st-century post-apocalyptic novel.
Currently, I am the Principal Investigator of “Writing the Sleep Crisis”, a research project funded by the European Commission and the Wellcome Trust. In this project, which I am developing into a book, I explore representations of sleep in contemporary culture and the so-called sleep crisis, namely, today’s presumed widespread sleep deprivation.
My research has been supported by the Wellcome Trust (Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Science), the European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship and Erasmus Mundus), the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin (Alfred A. and Blanche W. Knopf Research Fellowship in the Humanities), and a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence EU Scholarship at the University of Nottingham. I have held research and teaching positions at a number of universities in the UK and Italy – see the list of my academic appointments below.
I co-founded Contemporary Studies Network and, since 2018, I sit on the Executive Committee of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies – at present, I serve as the Association’s communications and website administrator.
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Dr Diletta De Cristofaro
Experience
Qualifications
2018
FHEA (Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK)
2015
PhD in American Studies
University of Nottingham, UK
2010
Laurea Magistrale (MPhil) in Philosophy
Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, with an Erasmus year at Paris IV Sorbonne, France
2008
Laurea Triennale (BA Hons) in Philosophy
Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
Academic Appointments
9/2021 – present
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow
META (Social Sciences and Humanities for Science and Technology), Politecnico di Milano, Italy
7/2020 – present (on leave since 9/2021)
Wellcome Trust Research Fellow
Department of Humanities, Northumbria University, UK
9/2017 – 6/2020
Teaching Fellow in Contemporary Literature
School of English, Drama and Creative Studies, University of Birmingham, UK
1/2017 – 8/2017
Lecturer in English
School of Humanities, De Montfort University Leicester, UK
8/2016 – 12/2016
Teaching Fellow in British Studies
Harlaxton College, UK (the British Campus of the University of Evansville)
1/2016 – 6/2016
Associate Lecturer
School of English and Journalism, University of Lincoln, UK
1/2014 – 6/2016
Teaching Affiliate
Department of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, UK
Visiting Positions
8/2017
Research Fellow
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, USA
1/2012
Visiting Research Fellow
Centre for the Humanities, Utrecht University, the Netherlands