Irene Cecchini is a PhD candidate in Literary Studies at Ghent University. Before enrolling in the PhD program, she studied Italian Linguistics and Literature (BA) and graduated in Comparative Modern Literature (MA) at the Alma Mater Studiorum- University of Bologna with a dissertation on the relationship between the ecological though and the contemporary Italian literature. Her research interests lie primarily in contemporary Italian narrative, literary theory and comparative literature -expecially french and english one-. Her current project focuses on the reception and interpretation of the ecological though in contemporary Italian narrative prose. Her supervisors are Niccolò Scaffai (Letteratura e ecologia), Pierre Schoentjes (Ce qui a lieu. Essai d'écopoétique) and Sabine Verhulst.