Roberto Francavilla is Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Literature at the University of Genoa where besides his undergraduate studies, he teaches a PhD in Comparative Literature. Previously he was Professor at the University of Siena, where he developed research work as a grant holder of the Camões Institute and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. He was also a visiting scholar at the University of Macau and at UNESP in São Paulo.
Editor of Igarapé - collection of studies on the Americas, co-editor of Le Tagidi, collection of Portuguese poetry, founding member of AISPEB (Associazione Italiana di Studi di Portoghesistica e Brasilianistica), of Jacaranda (Associazione di Studi Brasiliani), of CRIAR (Centro Interuniversitario sulle Americhe Romanze).
Translator of Fernando Pessoa, of which he edited in Italian The Book of Disquiet, of Clarice Lispector, João Guimarães Rosa, José Cardoso Pires, Chico Buarque, Gonçalo M. Tavares among others. He gives regular seminars on the theory and practice of literary translation.
He has written books and articles in the fields of Portuguese and Comparative Literatures, with special attention to the analysis of the relationship between literature, censorship and political power, between literature and memory, between literature and space.
As a literary critic he collaborates with the cultural supplement of the daily newspaper "Il Manifesto".
In the creative field he is the author of the projects Hotel Sodade and Papelaria Atlântica (with the photographer Filippo Romano)
