Dr. Laura Lazzari Dr. Laura Lazzari is a Research Scholar in the fields of Italian Studies, Motherhood
Studies, and the Medical Humanities. She is a Professorial Lecturer at the George
Washington University and a Scientific Collaborator at the Sasso Corbaro
Foundation for the Medical Humanities, Switzerland.

She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Lausanne, an M.St. in Women’s
Studies from the University of Oxford, and an M.A. in Teaching from the University
of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). She has taught at the
Universities of Lausanne, Fribourg, and Franklin in Switzerland, at George
Washington University and at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC,
USA. She was the 2015-2016 recipient of the AAUW (American Association of
University Women) International Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of
Italian at Georgetown University.

Dr. Lazzari is an affiliate member of the “Motherhood Project” at Maynooth
University, Ireland, and her current research revolves around representations of
pregnancy, birth, and postpartum in contemporary Western cultures and societies.
In the last years, she has worked extensively on motherhood and has taught courses,
written articles, and organized interdisciplinary conferences related to this topic.

Her publications include a monograph on Lucrezia Marinella (Insula, 2010), the
special volume To Be or Not to Be a Mother: Choice, Refusal, Reluctance and Conflict.
Motherhood and Female Identity in Italian Literature and Culture (“intervalla:
platform for intellectual exchange”, Special Volume 1, 2016), the edited volume (with
Nathalie Ségeral) Trauma and Motherhood in Contemporary Literature and
Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), and The Palgrave Handbook of Reproductive
Justice and Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Among her recent articles are:
Childbirth Narratives in the Canton of Ticino (Switzerland): Perceptions and
Experiences of Mothers Who Gave Birth before and during COVID-19, in Learning
from the Pandemic: Possibilities and Challenges for Mothers and Families (“The
Journal of the Motherhood Initiative”, Vol 14, No 1, 2023); and Narrations of
Traumatic Childbirth in Contemporary Transnational Women’s Writing, in Trauma
Narratives in Italian and Transnational Women’s Writing, ed. by Tiziana De Rogatis
and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi (Sapienza Università Editrice, 2022).
More information on her research and publications can be found on her
website: https://sites.google.com/site/lazzarilaura