On 9 March 2023 , senior lecturer within the ' , was invested with the insignia of Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy by His Excellency Fabrizio Romano, Italian Ambassador to Malta. The Order is conferred by the President of the Italian Republic, on the proposal of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Since 2013, Dr Fabrizio Foni has been teaching in Malta study-units ranging from medieval literature to the history of Italian television, also designing new study-units devoted to textual criticism, genre literature, as well as the relationship between comics and cinema. He also lectures within the M.A. in Film Studies and is a member of the .
As a researcher, Dr Foni specialises in popular culture, with a particular interest in the Gothic, the monstrous, and the supernatural. He co-authored the most comprehensive annotated bibliography of criticism on the Fantastic in Italian Literature (Stefano Lazzarin et al., Il fantastico italiano, Florence: Le Monnier Universit脿, 2016). Two intertwined books which he co-edited between 2021 and 2022 with Prof. Fabio Camilletti (Almanacco dell'orrore popolare and Almanacco dell'Italia occulta, both published by the Bologna-based Odoya) featured respectively as number two and one on a RAI programme parade.
In a ceremony held at the Residence of the Italian Ambassador in Ta' Xbiex, His Excellency Fabrizio Romano acknowledged Dr Foni's primary role in promoting Italian popular culture in Malta
