Ruth Murphy

Ruth Murphy is a Research Associate in the Department of Italian at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on the history and memory of Allied prisoners of war in Italy, funded by the Monte San Martino Trust. She explores interdisciplinary intersections between ethics, literature, and 20th-century intellectual history.

• Education: BA in European Studies (Trinity College Dublin), PhD (University of Cambridge)
• Positions: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sheffield (Life Worth Living project)

Research Interests

• Allied POWs in Italy (1943–1945)
• Ethical concepts in postwar Italian literature
• Italian fascism and resistance narratives
• Holocaust studies and trauma representation
• Feminism in 20th-century intellectual contexts

Key Publications

• 2025: Levi Beyond Levi chapter on Levi and Baldwin
• 2024: New Literary History on moral philosophy-literature debates
• 2024: Annali d’italianistica on Elsa Morante’s La Storia