Maria Pace Aquilina is a Postdoc Researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB).  She is currently researching how narratives/dramas of social rise, achievement and merit are negotiated and shaped in the Restoration period in England. 

She holds a Phd in Tudor and Renaissance from the University of Sheffield.  In this study, it is contended that due to the complex relationship between female authors and male authorities, sixteenth-century women writers remained side-lined by their contemporary readers and, subsequently, modern critics.  By understanding these women's various struggles while living in a patriarchal society, the twenty-first-century reader can comprehend better these women writers' contributions to the literary world.