Jessy Carton is a voluntary postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Literary Studies of Ghent University and a visiting scholar at Columbia University in the City of New York. At Columbia, she is conducting a research project on refugee narratives in contemporary literature funded by the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF). Her current research interests include refugee and forced migration studies, comparative literature, law and literature, rhetorical analyses and literary journalism.
Jessy holds a B.A. and M.A. in French and Italian Linguistics and Literature from Ghent University. She obtained a PhD in Literary Studies at Ghent University in 2015 with a dissertation on the outsiderdom of the Italian author Goffredo Parise in the Cold War period. In 2016-17, she has worked as a protection officer at the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons in Brussels.
Jessy has published articles on Aleksandar Hemon, Goffredo Parise, Ennio Flaiano and Raffaele La Capria in leading international journals. She is the author of Parise giornalista. Ethos di uno "scrittore irregolare" (Librairie Droz, 2017).
