Valerio Amoretti

Valerio Amoretti is a literary scholar who explores how reading and writing impact our minds and brains. He uses contemporary object-relations psychoanalysis to understand how literature and storytelling can lead to long-term psychic changes and creativity. From 2020 to 2023, Valerio conducted research at Columbia University as a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, investigating the brain's role in these processes. 

Now, Valerio works as a Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and will teach the "The Mind Between Literature and the Brain" seminar in Fall 2023. His educational background spans both science and the humanities. He began with chemistry and worked in a molecular neuroscience lab at University College London, later contributing to clinical research and outreach for the UK's National Health Service. He holds graduate degrees in psychoanalytic psychology from the Anna Freud Centre and in literary studies from the University of York. In 2019, he earned his PhD from Columbia University with a dissertation focusing on the psychic aspects of reading modernist fiction.