Peter Vassallo holds a BA Honours degree form the University of Malta where he was awarded the British Council Prize for English Studies. He also obtained the degrees of MA and D.Phil from the University of Oxford where he was Commonwealth Scholar, and later, Fellow. He was a research scholar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Malta and was formerly Head of the English Department (1998-2007). He is also Chair of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies and general editor of the Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies which he founded. He specialized in Romantic Literature and has published widely on Byron, the English Romantic poets and British Writers in Italy. His book on Byron: The Italian Literary Influence (Macmillan, 1984) is considered ‘the authoritative study' on the subject.
He has been visiting Professor at some of the leading Universities in Britain and Italy (including Oxford and Bologna) and a guest specialist lecturer at the British Institute oif Florence. He was elected President of the International Association of University Professors of English (2007-2010) and a Fellow of the English Association (2011).
He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Romanticism (Edinburgh) and of La Questione Romantica (Bologna). His most recent book is British Writers and the Experience of Italy (1800-1940). He was invested with the National Order of Merit of the Republic of Malta in 2015.