Angelica Vedelago is tenure-track researcher of English Literature at the University of the Aosta Valley.
After graduating cum laude from Liceo Ginnasio Statale “Antonio Canova” (2010), she completed her BA and MA in Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Padua (2013 and 2015 respectively, both cum laude), benefitting from two scholarships for two exchange programmes (Erasmus at the University of St Andrews, UK; German Service for Academic Exchange at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany). After an MSt in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford in 2016, she earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Padua in 2020 with the support of the CARIPARO Foundation.
After teaching English Literature as a stipendary lecturer at the University of Ferrara, she worked as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Verona within the Project of National Relevance “Classical Receptions in Early Modern English Drama”. From 2022 to 2024 she was Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow at the University of Hamburg and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, where she worked on the interplay between Greek tragedy and Christianity in early modern Italian and English drama. Her ensuing project — entitled “2WayTragic: Greek Tragedy and Christianity in the British Isles (1500-1660)” — was awarded the MSCA Seal of Excellence from the European Commission with a score of 90.20% in 2026.
In 2023 she passed the national selection for high school teachers of English language and literature (“Concoso Ordinario 2020”) in the Region Veneto.
She is author of two forthcoming monographs: The Reception of Sophocles’ Antigone in Early Modern English Drama (under contract with Oxford University Press) and the edition of Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Antigone (under contract with MHRA). She is also currently editing Thomas Watson’s Latin translation of Sophocles’Antigone for Brill. She has contributed to various volumes with De Gruyter, Brepols and Droz as well as double-blind peer-reviewed articles for Renaissance Studies, Textus and The International Journal of the Classical Tradition.
Conference presentations, seminars, and lectures
Papers presented at international conferences
12/02/2025 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität – invited by the organiser; “The Reception of John Barclay’s Argenis in early seventeenth-century England” at the conference Barockroman und Normativität / Romanzo barocco e normatività
14/06/2024 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (conference I organised); “Intersection between Greek Tragedy and Christianity in Early Modern Italian and English Drama: Questions of Genre” al convegno The Classics and the Bible in Early Modern European Tragedy
09/03/2024 Princeton University: “Jesuit drama in Sicily: The interplay of classical and biblical sources in Tuccio’s and Scammacca’s tragedies” at the conference Early Modern Translation and the Classics
23/06/2023 University of Montpellier – invited by the organisers; “Jesuit drama in Sicily: The interplay of classical and biblical sorces in Stefano Tuccio’s and Ortensio Scammacca’s tragedies” al convegno Servir et éduquer: un apostolat jésuite en Europe moderne (XVIe – XVIIIe siècles)
21/04/2023 British Institute of Florence: “Christianizing Greek Myths in Early Modern English Tragedy” at the conference The 14th IASEMS Graduate Conference
24/02/2023 University College London: “Haunting Memories and Memorable Performances in Pelopidarum Secunda” at the conference Memory and Performance: Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals
06/09/2022 University of Catania: “Jephthah in Euripidean Buskins: How Two Humanists from the British Isles Used Greek Tragedy to Dramatize the Bible” at The 30th AIA Annual Conference: “Experiment and Innovation: Branching Forwards and Backwards”
06/09/2022 University of Padua: “Have one’s faith and adorn it too”: Faithfulness and Rhetoric in English Renaissance Translation Theory of Religious Works” at the conference Translation in Early Modern Europe: Domains, Networks, Theories
24/06/2022 University College London: “Translating’ Sophocles in the Restoration: The ‘Athenian Harp’ resounding in Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus (1679)” at the conference Translating Ancient Greek Drama
17/06/2022 University of Insubria: “Anti-Imperium” Antigones: Political Resistance in the Early Modern English Receptions of Sophocles’ Antigone” at the conference Contra Imperium: Forms of dissent in England 1300-1700
20/05/2022 University of Padua: “The Metre (and the Prose) of mid-sixteenth-century English comedy (1530s-1580s): Theory and Practice” at the conference Metre and Rhythm in Medieval and Early Modern English Poetry
02/09/2021 Warburg Institute (online): “Jephthah in Euripidean Buskins: How Two Humanists from the British Isles Used Greek Tragedy to Dramatize the Bible” at the conference Classical Reformations: Beyond Christian Humanism
11/12/2020 Sorbonne Paris Nord, Université Grenoble Alpes, e Centro “APGRD” dell’Università di Oxford (online): “The Strange Case of Sophocles and Mr May: Functionalized Reception in Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Antigone (1632)” at the conference Translating Ancient Greek Drama in Europe 1600-1750
19/10/2020 Masaryk University (online): “The ‘Harp’ and the ‘Muse’: Sophocles and Seneca resounding in Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus (1679)” at the conference English Theatre Culture 1660-1737: Adaptations, Appropriations and Afterlives on Restoration Stages
11/06/2020 University of St Andrews (online): “Pop Academia: The Crosscontamination Between Popular and Academic Drama in Thomas Watson’s Sophoclis Antigone” at the conference Renaissance Academic Drama and the Popular Stage
29/11/2019 University of Oxford: “Translating Greek Tragedy in Sixteenth-century Europe: Between Imitation and Competition” at the conference Translating Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe
22/11/2019 University of Turin: “Networks and Clusters: A Synchronic System to Account for the Diachronic Relationships Between Texts” at the conference Forms, History, Narrations, Big Data
14/12/2018 University of Oxford: “Thomas Watson’s Antigone: The Didacticism of Neo-Latin Academic Drama” at the conference Translating Greek Tragedy in 16-Century Europe
03/09/2018 King’s College London: “Didacticism in Neo-Latin Academic Drama: Mind-reading and ‘Mind-leading’ in Thomas Watson’s Antigone” at the conference Ancient Greek Drama in Latin 1506-1590
13/06/2018 University of Cagliari: “‘Mind-reading’ the Self in Neo-Latin Academic Drama: Thomas Watson’s Antigone” at The Ninth IASEMS Annual Conference
01/06/2017 The Shakespeare Institute: “Cleopatra the Liar, Cleopatra the Director in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra” at The Nineteenth Annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference
03/05/2017 University of Padua: “Thomas North’s Plutarch: Translating a Translation in the Elizabethan Period” at the conference Acquisition through Translation: The Rise of the Vernacular in Early Modern Europe
07/04/2017 The British Institute of Florence: “Lying in the Play and with the Play: Cleopatra as a Liar and as a Director in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra” at The IASEMS Graduate Conference
13/12/2016 University of Oxford: “The Effects of Displacement on the Language of James Thomson’s Agamemnon” at The Sixth Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World
Seminars, Invited Lectures, Workshops:
10/05/2024 invited presentation of the project “Intersezioni tra tragedia greca e cristianesimo nel teatro italiano ed inglese (1550-1660)” within the workshop for the 2022 PRIN “Politics of Worship pre- and post-Reformation”, University of Padua
11/01/2023 invited lecture: “Richardson’s Pamela (1740)” nell’ambito di un corso sul teatro di Carlo Goldoni, University of Hamburg
04/09/2019 presentation of the PhD thesis: “The Reception of Sophocles’ Antigone in Early Modern English Drama” at The AIA Pre-Conference Symposium for Early Career Researchers, University of Padua
23/05/2019 “The Reception of Sophocles’ Antigone in Early Modern English Drama” at The Young Scholars’ Workshop of the Tenth IASEMS Conference, University of Genoa
19/10/2018 invited lecture: “Shakespeare and Reception Studies” within the BA course in Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Padua
10/10/2018 invited lecture: “English Antigones: Translating and Adapting Sophocles in the Early Modern Period” within the Seminar of English and American Studies, University of Padua
23/11/2017 “Translating Sophocles in the Early Modern Period: Thomas Watson’s Antigone” within Professor Fiona Macintosh’s seminar “Theories and Methods of Reception”, University of Oxford
22/11/2014 “Analyse von Hölderlins Übersetzung von Sophokles’ Antigone” within the “Oberseminar” of Professor Friedrich Vollhardt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
