Full professor of Germanic Philology, from 1986 to 1993 at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Tuscia (Viterbo), from 1993 to 2012 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Arezzo (Department of Modern Literature and Language Studies), University of Siena, and from 2012 to 2015 at the Department of Philology and Literary Criticism of the same university. He previously held the position of assistant professor of Germanic Philology at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Florence (1975‒1986).

Research activity (main fields):
Germanic (particularly Icelandic) grammatical literature of the Middle Ages; History of the Scandinavian languages in the Middle Ages; Grapho-phonemics of the Germanic languages; Glossography in medieval Scandinavia; Old Scandinavian literature concerning geography and travels. (See also Publications).

Academic, scientific, and editorial offices:
‒ Member of the Advisory Board of the International Saga Conference) for the period 1985‒1988.
‒ Chairman of the Italian Society for Germanic Philology (Associazione Italiana di Filologia Germanica) from 2003 to 2008, for two consecutive terms.
‒ Director of the Department of Modern Literature and Language Studies (Dipartimento di Letterature Moderne e Scienze dei Linguaggi) of the University of Siena from 1999 to 2005, for two consecutive terms.
‒ Director of the Doctoral School for Text Sciences at the University of Siena (2010‒2011) and coordinator of the Section 'Germanic Philology and Linguistics' of the same doctoral school (2003‒2011). He previously directed the PhD Programme in Germanic Philology and Linguistics of the University of Siena (1998‒2003).
‒ Editor-in-chief of the journal Filologia Germanica – Germanic Philology, published under the auspices of the Italian Society for Germanic Philology, from 2009 (year of foundation of the journal) to 2016 .

Teaching activity (1986‒2015):
Besides yearly introductory courses to historical and comparative Germanic linguistics, he held courses on subjects relating to the principal linguistic and cultural areas of the Germanic Middle Ages. Among these are: Old English and Old Icelandic geographic and travel literature; Scientific and pseudo-scientific literature of medieval Germany and England; Old Icelandic skald sagas; The literary civilization of the Goths; Runic writing and the Latin alphabet; Literary documents of Viking Age England; Norwegian kings' sagas; Medieval Germanic grammatical texts; Old and Middle English poetry. He also collaborated to the teaching of General Linguistics with courses on language change.