BOCALE PAOLA

Paola Bocale is an Associate Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Insubria, where she teaches Russian Language and Culture and coordinates the Russian language curriculum. She holds a PhD in Comparative Philology and a degree with honors in Modern Languages ​​from Sapienza University of Rome, an MPhil in Educational Research from the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Anglia Ruskin University. An expert on the sociocultural and linguistic identity of Slavic minorities in Italy and Italian minorities in Eastern European countries, she has documented processes of minority language maintenance and revitalization in multilingual contexts, including the Crimean Peninsula, Fiume (Rijeka), Istria, and Northern Italy. Her current research investigates the social, political, and educational role of Ukrainian community schooling in various migration contexts. In particular, she is interested in examining how Ukrainian community schools provide spaces where students—including refugee children—can explore, negotiate, or even contest their multicultural and multilingual identities. Prof. Bocale has authored numerous studies on the pragmatics and morphosyntax of Slavic languages, as well as sociolinguistic analyses regarding the languages ​​of Slavic migrants in Italy and Italian-speaking communities in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. She is a co-founder and currently the Deputy Director of the Research Center on Minorities (CERM)—where she also coordinates the "Minorities in the Post-Soviet Space" research group—and serves as co-scientific director of the "Quaderni del CERM" publication series.