Michela Bertossa is a Ph.D. student and Teaching Assistant in Italian at the Department of French and Italian at the Ohio State University. She is currently on a Dissertation Year Fellowship and working full-time on her doctoral degree. 

She obtained her BA (2015) and MA (2018) in Italian Literature and Linguistics with minors in History, Gender Studies, and Islamic Studies at the University of Zurich. In 2015 she was an exchange student at the Institute of Cultural Studies at Leipzig University, Germany. Her Bachelor's dissertation focused on patriarchal structures in Maria Messina's narrative, while her Master's dissertation was about Clara Maffei's literary salon (1834-1886) and her influence on the career of Italian women writers in Liberal Italy. She also collaborated on the digital humanities website project "Scrittrici del primo Novecento" prompted by the chair of Italian Literature at the University of Zurich. At The Ohio State University, she is working on her dissertation on the representation of sex workers and motherhood in 19^th and early 20^th-century literature and silent cinema.