Maya De Leo (she/they) holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Pisa, where she is currently a research fellow. She has taught gender history, LGBTQIA+ history, and queer studies at the University of Genoa, Turin, Trento, Padua (Scuola Galileiana di Studi Superiori), Bologna and Pisa.
Her research interests focus on LGBTQIA+ cultural history and queer theory: she has published numerous contributions on these topics in scholarly journals and collected volumes.
For her doctoral dissertation on the representations of homosexuality in the Long XIXth Century she won the Equal Opportunity Commission of the University of Pisa Award for the best PhD dissertation in Gender Studies (2007) and the “Maria Baiocchi” Award for the best PhD dissertation in LGBT Studies (2007). She received the Emma Goldman Snowball Award (2022) and her book, Queer. Storia culturale della comunità LGBT+ (Einaudi, 2021), won the 2022 SISSCO (Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History) prize for best first work.