Biography

Marilena Beltramini was born in Bagnaria Arsa, Udine (Italy).
She lived with her family but she used to stay part of the year at her aunt’s house where since her early childhood she spent most of her summer in the house library. She was encouraged to be clever and learn about the world. She was curious about anything new and she still is.

Significant for her further school choices was her middle school English teacher who contributed to her motivation to language study, a passion she would cultivate in the years to come. But it was at university that her real passion came to surface. The study of Wellek and Warren's Theory of Literature proved seminal and opened her the doors of the mysterious and yet fascinating world of literary texts and textuality.

In november 1992, she graduated with a dissertation on Kurt Vonnegut's fiction and discovered the challenges of Postmodernism, a field she would gain further awareness of in later years. University life was interesting and she particularly enjoyed lectures and tutorials on the Metaphysicals, T. S. Eliot and V. Woolf, texts she still loves reading and studying.

After graduation she started teaching in the hope to get a permanent position. She attended a training course that unveiled her the world of textual analysis and critical theories - reading perspectives totally new to her - despite her experience previous with Wellek and Warren. She came into contact with intertextuality, J. Kristeva and several important scholars she would study later. Since then her interests have been in the field of literature from various perspectives and since then she has transferred the new discoveries to school practice. In the meanwhile, after gaining a permanent position in the state school, she became more and more interested in reading and teaching texts in view of making them alive in the school context.

Further significant experiences followed. She was awarded scholarships at Aberdeen and Norwich universities. In Aberdeen she discovered David Lodge's fiction and received training in the study of poetry within a trans-national context. The encounter with trainers she considers key agents of her professional transformation opened her new borders of learning and new directions to take. She became aware of the potential of project work and a new phase in action research followed, so much so that the results obtained encouraged her to reshape her syllabuses which for some years became mainly designed on project basis.
In the mean time she was invited to design and implement teachers' training actions. She organized courses including theoretical input and workshopsthe results of which turned out promising. She also worked for the Agenzia Nazionale INDIRE and she contributed with material design and as an online tutor for European Citizenship and experimental language teaching projects in collaborative format like POSEIDON for the Ministry of Education.

In 2001 she won a post at General Direction U.S.R. Friuli Venezia Giulia where she was in charge of trans-national projects and the implementation of the school reform in the field of foreign language learning. She came into contact with different learning and teaching agencies also at European and international level. In the same year she was offered the opportunity of an Arion Study Visit that saw her in Galicia where she was also invited to give a lecture at Santiago de Compostela University about language learning and international projects, minority languages included.
In the following years she won additional scholarships for teachers trainers at Dublin National Agency, a Pestalozzi one in London and a scholarship for Advanced Teaching Methodology in Oxford.

In the last few years she has gone back to school and, in addition, she has started a teacher training experience at SSIS and later on with TFA (Tirocinio Formativo Attivo) at  Udine University. She has successfully completed a Master in Open Distance Learning (ODL) and one in Eurocultures which included 9 European universities.
Lately, her action research has mainly included European and international project work and experimentation of active forms of learning and teaching, including ICT and ODL. Her latest Master of Arts thesis focussed on The European Dimension in Secondary School Education.

She hs also gained some experience in CLIL teachers'training addressed to different teachers of different orders of school, a TKT course for teachers included

She is involved in the implementation of a Portfolio of the European Student and the design of active citizenship forms of  language learning and is Member of the Scientific Committee of Culturalpeadria.

From 2005 to 2021 she taught in a blended mode at Cervignanodel Friuli Liceo Scientifico Albert Einstein". She has a professional site inside which a Schoolwork space has been dedicated to students' materials for study and homework, thus providing learners with options for online and collaborative and project work included.
The site is still working and still records plenty of students and trainees'visits.

Marilena lives in a small village near Cervignano del Friuli where she used to teache at "A. Einstein" Liceo Scientifico. She regularly visits the U.K. and spends some time in London, the city she considers the most interesting example of a global European capital.

She retired in 2021 and since then she has kept on working as teacher trainer. Since 2024 is also works as a voluntary teacher at Università della Terza Età in Cervignano del Friuli where she holds a course on Sharing English Literature: Reading and Discussion Practice .