Alessandra Grego was born in London and raised in Rome, where she studied Modern Languages at Sapienza University, earning a PhD in English Literature in 2004 with a thesis on the function of mythical narratives in the novels of the Victorian realist George Eliot. She has taught English language and literature for over 20 years, both in Italian universities and at John Cabot University. Alongside a continuous interest in how and why stories are told and what effect they have on their readers, she cultivates a passion for design, illustration, and graphics, which she fostered quietly on the side until she found a way of combining her literary and visual interests in the pursuit of Digital Humanities. This relatively new approach to the study and pedagogy of literature through the use of digital tools provides, among other things, a way to visualize information about literature. She is a hand-drawn and CGI animation enthusiast, with a particular love for the movies of Miyazaki Hayao.