Ilaria Serra was born in Venice, Italy and is a Professor of Italian and Comparative Studies at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. She is the author of several articles and chapters on Italian cinema, literature and migration, and the books, Immagini di un immaginario: L’emigrazione italiana negli Stati Uniti fra i due secoli: 1890-1925 (Cierre 1997), The Value of Worthless Lives: Writing Italian American Immigrant” (Fordham University Press, 2007, 2010), and The Imagined Immigrant. Images of Italian Emigration to the United States between 1890 and 1924 (Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2009).

She now coordinates the digital humanities projects, “Italian American Oral History Archive,” “Italian American Memories Documentary Archive” and “Floritalians.” In 2008, she founded a six-week summer study abroad program in Venice, Italy, that she leads every year. She collaborates with the Gallio Film Festival delle Opere Prime, hold among the mountains of the Asiago plateau every July.

Ilaria is on the Jury Panel for Best Documentary Short.