My research it at the intersection of the cognitive, socio-semiotic and critical traditions in discourse studies. I am interested in cognitive linguistics (cognitive grammar, frame semantics, construction grammar), multimodality and Critical Discourse Analysis.I work on real-life (multimodal) corpora, mainly in Italian, but with sidesteps in English, French and Dutch. I try to describe conceptual structures as linguistic patterns involving different semiotic channels, such as language, gesture, face and gaze.I currently teach discourse studies, Italian linguistics and Italian organizational communication in the BA in applied linguistics and the MA in Multilingual Communication at the Antwerp campus, and Text Linguistics in the MA in Advanced Linguistics at the Leuven campus. where I coordinate the Italian group and the MA in Multilingual Communication.Current research topics include:1. associative concept relations: cause, instrument, effect and purpose;2. the discourse of futurity, between future time and future tense;3. the discourse semantics of emerging medical concepts; such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and medical complications; 4. glocal Italian discourse about tourism, organized crime, industrial districts and European capitals of culture;5. the impact of French post-structuralism (Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault) on embodied intersubjectivity and identity in cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis.