Norma Schifano is a Fellow in Modern Languages (Italian) and Assistant Professor in Italian and Comparative Romance Linguistics in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics. Her research focuses on documenting and theorizing morphosyntactic change and variation in Romance, with a particular focus on language contact, both diachronically and synchronically. Recently she has become interested in ethical challenges and opportunities raised by collaborations between academics and third-sector organizations representing linguistic minorities. Along with the Linguistics@InMFL team, she has also published extensively in pedagogical linguistics.

Norma completed a PhD in Italian at Clare College in 2015 and worked as RA on a Leverhulme-funded project (2016-2019) in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics (Cambridge). Before taking up her current post, she worked at the Universities of Oxford, Manchester and Birmingham.