Ornella De Nigris is a senior researcher in Chinese Studies at the University of Siena, where she teaches Chinese Language and Translation in the Bachelor's Degree Program in Languages for Intercultural and Business Communication and in the Master's Degree Program in Languages for Business and Development. She previously served as a post-doctoral researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. In 2014, she earned her Ph.D. in Civilizations, Cultures, and Societies of Asia and Africa from the Department of the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies at Sapienza University in Rome, defending a thesis titled "Strategies and Standards of Chinese Museums in the Promotion of Contemporary Art: Four Case Studies in Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai" (2014).
During the academic years 2015-16 and 2016-2017, she was an adjunct professor at the School of Foreign Languages and Cultures at the University of Carlo Bo in Urbino, Italy, where she taught Chinese Art History. From 2012 to 2017, she worked as the coordinator of educational and cultural activities at the Confucius Institute at Sapienza University in Rome. She lived in China for four years, where she attended advanced Chinese language courses and was a visiting student in Art History at Tsinghua University in Beijing. In China, she also co-curated smaller exhibitions with Chinese artists in Song Zhuang, Beijing (2009-2010). In 2014, she attended the NMK Museum Network Fellowship, an intensive course in museum studies at the National Museum of Korea in Seoul.
Her main research interests include Chinese contemporary art museums, modern and contemporary Chinese artistic lexicon, modern and contemporary Chinese art, and biennials and international circuits of Chinese contemporary art exhibitions. In addition to focusing on these aspects, her scholarly production also includes editing and translating from Chinese to Italian books on Chinese art history and catalogs of contemporary Chinese artists and photographers.