BIDOVEC Maria

Associate Professor of Slovene Language and Literature at the University of Naples “L’Orientale.”
After earning a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures with a specialization in Slavic Studies from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (1993), she obtained a PhD in Slavic Studies (2003) from the same university. From 1988 to 2009, she worked for RAI (Rome), where she was responsible for translation and broadcast of radio news programs in Slovene and occasionally in German. From 1990 to 2009, she was employed at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History (Rome), where she worked on data archiving and scientific translation.
In September 2009, she joined the University of Udine as a Lecturer, and since November 2018 she has been at L’Orientale in Naples. She is a member of AIS (Associazione Italiana Slavisti) and of Slavistično društvo Slovenije (Association of Slovene Slavists); she is Associate Editor of the series Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici (Florence) and member of the editorial boards of the journals Ricerche slavistiche and Slovenika (Belgrade).
With over twenty years of experience in teaching Slovene language and/or literature, she has attended numerous international conferences. She is the author of around fifty scholarly publications.
In September 2018, she was awarded a special prize by the Association of Slovene Slavists “for her research and teaching activity in the field of Slovene language and literature abroad.”
In July 2024, she was awarded the Toporišič Prize by the University of Ljubljana for her contributions to Slovene studies over the previous five years.
Main research areas:
Seventeenth-century Carniola
Reception of twentieth-century Slovene prose writers in Italy
Study and translation of Slovene folk tales and legends into Italian
Reception of Slovene literature in Italian culture and vice versa; translation of Slovene classics into Italian
Didactics of Slovene for Italian learners