Introduction

English Studies in Italy: New Directions and Perspectives comprises a selection of contributions to the AIA Pre-Conference Symposium, which took place at the University of Catania on 14 September 2022. An important event in the field of English Studies in Italy after the pandemic, this part of the Association’s 30th national conference – “Experiment and Innovation: Branching Forwards and Backwards” – constituted an opportunity not only for young scholars to discuss their research findings, but also for the wider academic community to reflect on the latest trends in English Linguistics, as well as in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures. The volume offers an interesting picture of the research that the younger generation of Anglicists have carried out since the late 2010s, and represents a high-quality product of the lively discussions that took place at the time of the Symposium. The contributions contained in the volume are balanced from the point of view of the areas of study they refer to and are thematically and methodologically interconnected. Taking a fresh but comprehensive look at the past, they question the main linguistic, cultural and literary issues of our time, thus projecting the entire field of English studies into the future.