Donata is Affiliate Senior Lecturer at King's Language Centre. Donata has an extensive teaching and research experience in Second Language Acquisition, Intercultural Studies and Applied Linguistics, with a particular focus on using cinema and literature in language teaching and on professional development.

In 2017, Donata was nominated as one of the Founding Fellows of King’s Educator Network in recognition of her commitment and dedication to learning and teaching in HE. In 2019 she was accredited as Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy; she also collaborates with King's Academy and is a member of the King's HEA Fellowships accreditation panel. She also collaborates with Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience. Donata is also an accredited Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, member of the BPC (British Psychoanalytic Association). Her main research interests are in the field of Second Language Acquisition and on language teachers’ professional development with a particular focus on identity and life narratives.

Donata studied MFL in Italy with a degree in English and German literature with a thesis on Virginia Woolf and psychoanalysis. She carried on her passion for literature in her postgraduate studies in London with an MA in Comparative Literature at UCL and her passion for psychoanalysis with an MA in Psychoanalytical Studies at the University of Essex and at the Tavistock and Portman Clinic. She also completed a number of postgraduate language teaching qualifications at the University of Siena and Bologna (DITALS I & II). She is currently studying for a Doctorate in Education at the Open University as part of the Language Acts and Worldmaking Project https://languageacts.org/

Before working at King’s College London, Donata collaborated with the University of Venice and of Rome 3 in Italy. She worked for the Italian Cultural Institute in London where she co-founded Teacher Training for Italian as a foreign language and she is a member of various international research groups.

Recently Donata has been appointed as a Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy and as a Programme Director at the Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck University of London where she teaches psychodynamic theory and practice at various programmes and also collaborates with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, teaching on their Foundation Course in Counselling & Psychotherapy.

Publications

• Puntil, D., L’utilizzo didattico del video nella classe di italiano L2: un’unita’ didattica basata sul film ‘Le fate Ignoranti’ di Ferzan Ozpetek, in: http://www.facli.unibo.it/NR/rdonlyres/F784F0FD-A62D-488A-AEEA-E46598826A92/16533/puntilvideo1.pdf  
• Puntil, D.,  Cinema e televisione nella Didattica dell’Italiano a Stranieri, in Lepschy A.L., Tamponi A.R., Prospettive sull’Italiano come Lingua Straniera, Ed.Guerra, 2005, pp.173-178.; 
• Puntil, D., The Impact of Visual and Audio-visual Images in developing Intercultural Competence, in HIGHER, CILT Bulletin for Language Teaching and Research in Higher Education, Issue 8, Summer 2004, pp.7. 
• Puntil, D., Insegnare l’Italiano, in Imparare ed Insegnare l’Italiano come Seconda Lingua, G. Pallotti, Ed. Bonacci, 2005, pp.45-58. 
• Puntil, D., Intercultural tasks to discover foreign language contexts: a dynamic meeting between cinema and literature, in Tuttitalia, Spring 2006, N0 32, p.14-20. 
• Puntil, D., Il linguaggio del cinema italiano, in Ledgway, A., Lepschy A.L., Didattica della Lingua Italiana: Testo e Contesto, Guerra Edizioni, 2008, pp.149-153. 
• Puntil, D., L’uso didattico di film in classe: un approccio task-based, in Officina.it, aprile 2010, n. 4, Ed.Alma, p.16-21:
•  http://www.almaedizioni.it/media/upload/officina/raccolte/raccolte_in_pdf/off.it.4.pdf 
• Andrawiss-Dlmini, H, Puntil, D., Open up the Classroom: The Use of Film Excerpts and Video Clips in Lower Levels Language Courses, in Cases on Audio-Visual media in Language Education, Igi-Global, 2017- http://www.igi-global.com/book/cases-audio-visual-media-language/178537) 
• Colaiacomo, S. Puntil. D., Learning to be Intercultural, in Higher Education, May 2018. 
• Puntil, D., Becoming a language professional in HE, in Gallardo, M. ed. n Negotiating Identity in Foreign Language Teaching, London: Palgrave, 2019.