Stories in Transit

Clelia Bartoli is Professor of Sociology of Law, Politics of Migration and Human Rights at the University of Palermo. Her studies focus on human rights, migration, critical theory of the State, institutional racism, epistemic violence, subalternity, social inclusion, and experimental pedagogy. She established “Polipolis,” a wide experimental educational program for unaccompanied minors, and on that occasion she began collaborating with “Stories in Transit,” a program led by Marina Warner. She co-founded Giocherenda, a collective of young migrants who invent and animate cooperative games. Her English publications include Legal Clinics in Europe: For a Commitment of Higher Education in Social Justice (Diritto & Questioni Pubbliche, 2016) and Chile Revolts: From the Uprisings toward the Constitutional Process (Accademia University Press, 2022).

Marina Warner writes fiction, criticism, and cultural history. Her award-winning books explore myths, symbols, and fairy tales, including From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994) and Stranger Magic: Charmed States & the Arabian Nights (Chatto & Windus, 2011). She has published five novels and three collections of short stories, and her essays on literature and art have been collected in Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature and Culture (Chatto & Windus, 2003) and Forms of Enchantment: Writings on Art and Artists (Thames & Hudson, 2018). Recent publications include Temporale (Sylph Editions, 2023) and Sanctuary: Ways of Telling, Ways of Dwelling (HarperCollins, 2025). She contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2015, she was awarded the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities.

Valentina Castagna is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Palermo. She is a member of the Unipa Research Centre “Migrare” (Migration), CIR. Since 2015 she has worked with Marina Warner on the international project Stories in Transit in the UK and Italy. She has published books and articles in the field of Women’s Studies and contemporary fiction and on medieval works such as The Book of Margery Kempe, focusing on contemporary rewriting of myths and popular culture, and on life writing.