Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano PhD

Dr. Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano is Full Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and Provost and Vice-President, Academic at Toronto Metropolitan University. Roberta joined TMU as vice-provost, faculty affairs in 2020 from York University.  She was previously Associate Dean (Faculty Affairs) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University (Toronto, Canada) and also Associate Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at York from 2006-2020.

She earned her Ph.D. in Italian Studies at the University of Toronto (2000). Her research interests include southern Italian dialectology, Molisan dialect literature, and how ethnicity and identity are represented on social media. She has published several articles, a monograph and two edited collections in these areas.  For the last few years she has been studying Italian food, branding and language; Italian food representations on social media and the notion of authenticity with regard to Italian food products especially in the diasporic context. With her colleague, Gabriele Scardellato, she organized an international conference titled "Italian Foodways Worldwide" in 2017 at York University and they recently co-edited Italian Foodways Worldwide: The Dispersal of Italian Cuisine(s) (Soleil, 2019). Roberta is currently President of the Canadian Association for Italian Studies (CAIS) and Vice-President of the Italian-Canadian Archives Project (ICAP).