Ileana Chirila joined UNH's Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department as an assistant professor of French in 2016. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary transcultural/transnational literatures in French, Francophone literatures, French cultural studies, emergent Romani literature in French, and multiculturalism.

Her first book project, Reinventing the Republic: Sino-French Literature in the Cosmopolitan Age, looks closely at cultural, political, and geographical realities underpinning the literature of Francophone writers of Chinese origins. Dr. Chirila's second book project, now in its early stages, explores one of the very few real “world” literatures, produced by Romani writers in Romani and several other languages.

She has published articles on new literary cosmopolitanism, transcultural literature in French, poetics and poietics, and Sino-French literature, and her work has appeared in journals or volumes in the United States, Canada, Portugal, France, and Romania.