Serenella Iovino

Serenella Iovino is an Italian cultural and literary theorist, and a Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is considered one of the main environmental philosophers of Italy. She is a contributor to the Italian newspaper la Repubblica. From 2001 to 2018, Iovino was a professor at the University of Turin, Italy. From 2008 to 2010, she also served as President of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE). In 2014, Iovino was a J. K. Binder Lecturer at the University of California, San Diego. In 2019, Iovino became Professor of Italian Studies and Environmental Humanities at the University of North Carolina, the first ever to obtain this double appointment. In 2024, she was named James Gordon Hanes Distinguished Professor in Humanities. Iovino has published extensively on ecocriticism, literature, and environmental ethics. She is the main proponent for material ecocriticism, a current of ecocritical thought. Her book *Ecocriticism and Italy: Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation* was awarded the 2016 Book Prize of the American Association for Italian Studies and the MLA's 2016 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies. In 2025, she received the Seres Puentes Award from the Arizona State University, an academic lifetime achievement award for contributions to the field of environmental humanities.