Mary O'Riordan is a scholar and academic specialising in Italian literature, currently Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Italian at the University of Cambridge, where she is also a Fellow of St Catharine's College. Her academic career has focused primarily on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century literature, with a particular focus on the works of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio. Her research explores themes such as the representation of the body, gender, and the complex intersections between text and image in medieval literary culture. She is the author of several internationally recognised publications, including the monographs *The Decameron Cornice: Allusion, Allegory, and Iconology* and the more recent *The Body in Question: The Poetics of the Human Body in Medieval Italian Literature*. For her significant contribution to Italian studies, she has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy, which in 2021 awarded her the prestigious Serena Medal, one of the highest honours for scholars of Italian culture in the United Kingdom.