Francesca Grasso

Scholar

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Computer Science Department
Dipartimento di Informatica

Curriculum vitae

Curriculum Vitae (0.2 MB)

Research products

All my research products

Selected research products

Published/Accepted Papers:

Grasso, F., Locci, S. & Stede, M. (2025 - forthcoming). Applying the Character-Role Narrative Framework with LLMs to Investigate Environmental Narratives in Scientific Editorials and Tweets. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Natural Language Processing Meets Climate Change (ClimateNLP 2025). ACL 2025. Vienna, Austria.

Grasso, F., Locci, S., Di Caro, L. (2025). Towards Addressing Anthropocentric Bias in Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Ecology, Environment, and Natural Language Processing (NLP4Ecology2025), pages 84–93, Tallinn, Estonia. University of Tartu Library.

Grasso, F., Patz, R., Stede, M. (2024). NYTAC-CC: A Climate Change Subcorpus of New York Times Articles. In Proceedings of the 10th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2024), pages 403–409, Pisa, Italy. CEUR Workshop Proceedings.

Grasso, F., Locci, S. (2024). Assessing Generative Language Models in Classification Tasks: Performance and Self-evaluation Capabilities in the Environmental and Climate Change Domain. In: Rapp, A., Di Caro, L., Meziane, F., Sugumaran, V. (eds) Natural Language Processing and Information Systems. NLDB 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14763. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70242-6_29

Grasso, F., Valese, A., Micheli, M. (2024). Body-Shaming Detection and Classification in Italian Social Media. In: Rapp, A., Di Caro, L., Meziane, F., Sugumaran, V. (eds) Natural Language Processing and Information Systems. NLDB 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14762. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70239-6_18

Grasso, F., Lovera Rulfi, V., Di Caro, L. (2024). VerbAligNet: Unlocking Multilingual Exploration of Verbal Arguments. In: Garoufallou, E., Sartori, F. (eds) Metadata and Semantic Research. MTSR 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2048. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65990-4_1
https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1948925

Grasso, F., Locci, S., Siragusa, G., & Di Caro, L. (2024, May). EcoVerse: An Annotated Twitter Dataset for Eco-Relevance Classification, Environmental Impact Analysis, and Stance Detection. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024) (pp. 5461-5472).https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.485

Criscuolo, L., Bordogna, G., Barbara, L., Benessia, A., Bergami, C., Calastri, E., Capocefalo, V., Caretto, A., Cavallo, C., Chakraborty, A., Colella, C., Colucci-Gray, L., Crosetto, S., De Lazzari, A., Di Lonardo, S., Ercole, E., Giuffredi, R., Grasso, F., Grasso, V., ... L’Astorina, A. (2024). Developing a Participatory Process for Soil Fertility: A Case Study in an Urban Area of Italy. Sustainability, 16(12), 4882.https://www.mdpi.com/2820968

Alloatti, F., Grasso, F., Ferrod R., Siragusa G., Di Caro L., Cena F. (2024). A Tag-based Methodology for the Detection of User Repair Strategies in Task-Oriented Conversational Agents. In Computer Speech & Language, vol. 86.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csl.2023.101603
https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1948931

Grasso, F., & Di Caro, L. (2023). Towards Cross-lingual Representation of Prototypical Lexical Knowledge. IJCoL. Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics. 9(9-2).
https://doi.org/10.4000/ijcol.1237
https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1948930

Grasso, F., Lovera Rulfi, V., Di Caro, L. (2022). MultiAligNet: Cross-lingual Knowledge Bridges Between Words and Senses. In: Corcho, O., Hollink, L., Kutz, O., Troquard, N., Ekaputra, F.J. (eds) Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. EKAW 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13514. Springer, Cham.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17105-5_3
https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1891705

Grasso, F. and Di Caro, L. (2021). A methodology for large-scale, disambiguated, and unbiased lexical knowledge acquisition based on multilingual word alignment. In Elisabetta Fersini, et al., editors, Proceedings of the Eighth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics, CLiC-it 2021, Milan, Italy, January 26-28, 2022, volume 3033 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings. CEUR-WS.org.
https://doi.org/10.4000/books.aaccademia.10653
https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1900672

Papers Under Review:

Cena F., Grasso, F. (submitted). **title anonymized for double-blind review** In Behaviour & Information Technology.

Proceedings/Editorial Contributions:

Valerio Basile, Cristina Bosco, Francesca Grasso, Muhammad Okky Ibrohim, Maria Skeppstedt, and Manfred Stede. 2025. Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Ecology, Environment, and Natural Language Processing (NLP4Ecology2025). University of Tartu Library, Tallinn, Estonia.

Italo Jose da Silva Oliveira, Pedro Paulo F. Barcelos, Rodrigo F. Calhau, Claudenir M. Fonseca, Guendalina Righetti, Stefano De Giorgis, Guendalina Righetti, Gabriele Sacco, Maria M. Hedblom, Oliver Kutz, Martin Glauer, Mirjam Stappel, Cássia Trojahn, María Poveda-Villalón, Daniel Garijo, César Henrique Bernabé, Asiyah Yu Lin, Francesco Compagno, Anna Fensel, Walter Terkaj, Guendalina Righetti, Greta Adamo, Damion M. Dooley, Michaela Kümpel, Georgeta Bordea, Robert Warren, Anoosha Sehar, Matthew Lange, Felix Bindt, Ido Toxopeus, Davide Audrito, Francesca Grasso, Roberto Nai, Emilio Sulis, John Beverley, Mark Jensen, Sergio de Cesare, Frederik Gailly, Giancarlo Guizzardi, Chris Partridge, Oscar Pastor, Alexander García Castro, Thomas Hubauer, Wolfgang Süß, Philipp Schmurr, Greta Adamo, Max Willis, Daniele Francesco Santamaria, Thijs van Ede, Dan Klein, Gal Engelberg, Gianpietro Castiglione, Giampaolo Bella, Andrea Continella, Giancarlo Guizzardi, Davide Lanti, Alessandro Mosca, Federico Maria Scafoglieri, Guohui Xiao, Krzysztof Kutt, Jesualdo Tomás Fernández-Breis, Alois Pichler, Gábor Palkó, Grzegorz J. Nalepa, Pawel Garbacz, Robert Pergl, Zubeida Casmod Khan, Pedro Paulo F. Barcelos, João Moreira, Adrien Barton, Emilio M. Sanfilippo, Laura Daniele, João Paulo A. Almeida, Enrico Franconi, Paul Johannesson, Chiara Ghidini, Veruska Zamborlini: Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO) - Episode X: The Tukker Zomer of Ontology, and satellite events co-located with the 14th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2024), Enschede, The Netherlands, July 15-19, 2024. CEUR Workshop Proceedings 3882, CEUR-WS.org 2024. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3882/

Toyoshima,F., Katsumi, M., Righetti, G., De Giorgis, S., M. Hedblom, M., Kutz,o., Brodaric,B., Grüninger,M., Hahmann,t., Damion Dooley, S., Lange, M., Küçük-McGinty, H., Sehar Simon, A., Cameron, R., Gajderowicz, B., Rosu, D., Hastings, J., Audrito, D., Di Caro, L., Grasso, F., Nai, R., Sulis, E., Bozzato, L., Shimizu, C., Zimmermann, A., Baratella, R., Borgo, S., de Cesare, S., Prince Sales, T.: Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops 2023 Episode IX: The Quebec Summer of Ontology co-located with the 13th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2023), Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada, July 19-20, 2023. CEUR Workshop Proceedings 3637, CEUR-WS.org 2023. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3637/

Symeonidou, D., Yu, R., Ceolin, D., Poveda-Villalón, M., Audrito, D., Di Caro, L., Grasso, F., Nai, R., Sulis, E., Ekaputra F., Kutz, O. & Troquard, N. (2022). EKAW-C 2022: Companion Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, September 26-29, 2022.
https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1900692

Awards and Honors:

Best Paper Award at NLDB 2024 - The 29^th International Conference on Natural Language & Information Systems – for the paper "Body-Shaming Detection and Classification in Italian Social Media" (Grasso, Valese & Micheli 2024); Turin, June 27^th2024.
Best Student Paper Award at MTSR 2023 - 18^th International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research – for the paper “VerbAligNet: Unlocking Multilingual Exploration of Verbal Arguments” (Grasso, Lovera Rulfi & Di Caro 2023); Milan, October 27^th 2023.
Best Paper Award at EKAW 2022 - 23^rd International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - for the paper "MultiAligNet: Cross-lingual Knowledge Bridges Between Words and Senses" (Grasso, Lovera Rulfi & Di Caro 2022);
Bözen, September 29^th 2022.

Research topics

I am a third-year Ph.D. candidate with formal training in linguistics, conducting academic research in Natural Language Processing (NLP).

My doctoral project bridges ecolinguistics and ecocriticism theory and methods with NLP techniques. In my thesis, I develop different methodological frameworks for the automatic detection of language attitudes that are either harmful or beneficial to sustainability and ecological well-being. In particular, I focus on the automatic detection, classification, and assessment of environmental and climate change-related narratives. The analysis draws on various types of texts – from social media posts and news articles to academic editorials – and also includes the identification of anthropocentric biases in language use, especially those embedded in Large Language Models (LLMs).

My other research interests include multilingual knowledge modelling – with a particular focus on lexical semantics and verb valency frames – as well as human–conversational agent interaction and hate speech detection, specifically targeting body shaming.

Worth mentioning: throughout my studies, I have developed strong expertise in Germanic Philology, especially at the intersection with theoretical and typological linguistics. My focus has been on verb valency alternation (Valenzänderung) and diachronic change (Valenzwandel) in Gothic, Old High German, Old English – I have focused on Old Saxon as well.

Collaborations and Organizational Roles:

I am an active member of several academic entities, including the Social Computing Research Group, Computer Science Department Board (as Ph.D. students representative), and the Ph.D. Committee (also as Ph.D. students representative).

I'm part of the Organizing Committee for the 11th Italian Conference on Computational Lingistics (CLiC-it 2025), serving as Proceedings Chair.

I designed, co-founded, and co-organized the 1^st edition of the International Workshop on Ecology, Environment, and Natural Language Processing (NLP4Ecology 2025) at the Joint 25th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics and 11th Baltic Conference on Human Language Technologies (NoDaLiDa/BalticHLT 2025).

I co-organized and chaired the first, second, and third editions of the International Workshop on Knowledge Management and Process Mining for Law (KM4LAW) at the International Conferences EKAW 2022, FOIS 2023, and FOIS 2024. I am currently co-organizing its fourth edition, to be hosted by FOIS 2025.

I've been part of the Organizing Committee for the 29th International Conference on Natural Language & Information Systems (NLDB 2024), serving as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chair.

I co-organized and chaired the 1^st edition of the International Workshop on Biased Data in Conversational Agents at the European Conference ECML PKDD 2023.

Research internship:

Since the end of October 2023, I have been a visiting Ph.D. Student at the University of Potsdam, Germany, under Prof. Dr. Manfred Stede. Our collaboration focuses on analyzing texts related to climate change and ecological issues.

In a collaborative internship with Almawave, a company specializing in NLP techniques, my focus has been on investigating corporate communication to identify unsustainable business practices.

Teaching/Supervisory Activities:

- I supervised an international group of Master’s students at the University of Potsdam for Prof. Manfred Stede’s Argument Mining Master’s course.

- I am co-supervising a Master’s thesis student in the Master Program in Comunicazione e Culture dei Media at the University of Turin with Prof. Antonio Dante Maria Santangelo.

- I am co-supervising a Master’s student for a Master’s Project on a fine-grained approach to analyzing framing through syntactic parsing at the University of Potsdam with Prof. Manfred Stede.

- I am currently serving as a teaching assistant to Prof. Angela Zottola for the Bachelor's course English Language in the Bachelor's Program in Political and Social Sciences (second semester, 2025). Previously, I substituted for Prof. Zottola as a teaching assistant for the Master's course Discourse Strategies in Contemporary English in the Master's Program in Government Sciences.

- I will lead a topic-specific seminar within Prof. Luigi Di Caro’s Master's course in Natural Language Processing, part of the Master's Program in Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems "Pietro Torasso" (second semester, 2025).

Research groups

Social Computing

Activities in agenda

See my calendar