Mario is currently a Lecturer/ Assistant Professor at University College Dublin, Ireland. His primary interests include the teaching of Chinese culture to Europeans. After graduating from Venice University in 2005 with an MA in East Asian Languages he moved to China. First he lived in Dalian and then in Nanjing. During the period 2009-2012 he completed an M.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language at Nanjing University, and later completed a PhD in Folklore at The Ohio State University.