An art historian and active archaeologist, Lea Cline joined the UGA-Cortona program in the Summer of 2009.  Lea will receive her PhD in Spring 2010 from the University of Texas at Austin; her dissertation focused on Roman sacrificial altars in ancient Rome but she has equal passion for Roman decorative schemes (paintings and mosaics) and early Renaissance art.  A native Texan, Lea has spent the better part of nine years in Italy, teaching American students, writing and working in excavation.  She received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2006-2007 which allowed her to live in Rome for a year, is currently a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, and spends her time away from the classroom working at a Roman villa site (Oplontis) near Pompeii.  While in Cortona, she will be teaching courses on both ancient Etruscan and Roman art, and Renaissance art. 

Christopher Parker Robinson was born in Atlanta, GA (USA) on September 14, 1971. In 1993 he earned his Bachelor of Arts concentrating in Ceramics with a minor in Medieval Studies from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina (USA). From 1994 to 1998, he attended the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina (USA). In these years, in addition to studies on ceramics, he made his first studies on the practice of wood fired (high temperature, 1300?C/2300?F) pottery as well as other materials and techniques such as blacksmithing, glass blowing and wood working. In 2001 he earned his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia (USA), concentrating in Ceramics. Since February 2002 he has worked for the University of Georgia Studies Abroad program in Cortona, Italy. Alongside his administrative duties and artistic studies, he is also active as a professor of ceramics. Christopher Robinson is currently living and working in Cortona, Italy.

Marco Pacioni studied contemporary Italian literature at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” where he obtained a laurea in 2000 and a PhD in 2006. After the school of specialization in philosophy at the second University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, in 2001 he moved to Indiana University, Bloomington, where he continued to study Italian literature, philology, and philosophy accomplishing a master in 2002 and a PhD in 2007.  He is the Academic Coordinator at UGA Studies Abroad Program in Cortona, where he also teaches Italian. His main publication is a book on the first printed editions of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He also published several articles which entirely cover the tradition of Italian literature. His next project is about the visual poetics and the representation of books in the tradition of painting between Medieval and Renaissance. He works as a book reviewer for two national newspapers. He has recently started to collaborate with visual artists to realize projects which include part of his poems.