Guildhall School of Business and Law staff profiles content store_hidden Piero Toto Our staff

Piero designs and leads modules across the BA and MA Translation programmes, with a particular focus on translation technology. His teaching areas include: terminology management, machine translation (MT), MT post-editing, AI and translation, CAT tools, and website and software localisation. In addition, he also leads sessions on specialised translation and practical Italian translation.

He is an early adopter of the flipped classroom approach to technology teaching. As a School Innovator, Piero champions blended learning initiatives and has integrated generative AI tools into vocational translator training whilst maintaining critical pedagogical frameworks.

He supervises dissertations on translation technologies, software localisation, machine translation, and queer language translation.

Research interests

• Poetry/Poetry translation
• Translation technology (terminology management, machine translation and post-editing, AI, translation memories, translation quality)
• Translation pedagogy
• Queer theory/translation
• Queer language
• Queer pedagogy

Publications

Books

• Toto, P. and Costacurta, M. (eds.) (2026) Carnal Languages - Interdisciplinary Issues in Sexual Communication. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-21292-4.
• Toto, P. (2023) Queering Sexual Health Translation Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009221023.
• Toto, P. (2021) tempo 4/4. Massa: Transeuropa Edizioni.
• De Marco, M. & Toto, P. (eds.) (2019). Gender Approaches in the Translation Classroom: Training the Doers. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04390-2.

Journal articles and chapters in books

• Toto, P. (2026) Conclusion: Meaning-Making Through Miscommunication and Loss. In Toto, P. and Costacurta, M. (eds.) Carnal Languages - Interdisciplinary Issues in Sexual Communication. London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 401–406. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-21292-4_15
• Freeth, P. and Toto, P. (2026). “The impact of AI-in-the-loop pedagogy: An action research approach to integrating AI technologies in translator training.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer (online first): https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399X.2026.2646863.
• Toto, P. and Freeth, P. (2025). Student perspectives on the use and importance of generative AI in translator training at London Metropolitan University. In: Challenges and Opportunities for Professional Practice and Training in Translation, Interpreting and Foreign Languages: Artificial Intelligence and New Technologies, edited by Laura Cruz-García and Jessica Pérez-Luzardo. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Available from: https://accedacris.ulpgc.es/jspui/handle/10553/152966.
• Toto, P. ‘Intervista’. In Covella, G. and Leonardi, G.P. (eds.) (2025) Queer e ora. Corpi, spazi e temporalità oltre l’arcobaleno. Milan: Mimesis, p. 135-144.
• Toto, P. (2025) ‘How Queer Is Your Love: un ricordo-manifesto dell’eredità letteraria di Tondelli’, in Rota, E. (ed.) Tondelli vive. Racconti di chi lo ha letto e amato. Cagliari: La Casa degli Dei, p. 22-25.
• Toto, P. (2021). ‘Flipped Classrooms and Translation Technology Teaching: A Case Study’, in C. Wang, B. Zheng (eds.), Empirical Studies in Translation and Interpreting: The Post-structuralist Approach. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003017400.
• Banos, R., & Toto, P. (2015). ‘Challenges and constraints in designing a localization module for a multilingual cohort’, in P. Sánchez-Gijón, B. Mesa-Lao, O. Torres-Hostench (eds.), Conducting Research in Translation Technologies (pp. 185-205). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0732-0.
• Toto, P. A. (2009). ‘Less about Sex, More about Shopping’, in S. Petrilli and D. Buchbinder (eds.), Masculinities. Identità maschili e appartenenze culturali, Milan: Mimesis, p. 153-158.
• Toto, P. A. (2002). ‘Forze oscure del tempo e dell’ignoranza’, in E. Rota (ed.), Caro Pier…, Milan: Selene, p. 60-62

Poems

• Toto, P. (2026) ‘house music (2k26 edit)’, in The Boy Is Beautiful, Issue 5.
• Toto, P. (2025) ‘Emotional Freedom Technique’, ‘How to Address Absence’ and ‘The Performance of Pain’, in iamb, wave 23, Autumn 2025.
• Toto, P. (2024) ‘f@gg0ts, in Magma Poetry, Issue 90 (Grassroot).
• Toto, P. (2024) ‘1992’, in Poetry London, Issue 108, Summer 2024.
• Toto, P. (2023) ‘Gravità’; ‘Qualcunə, altrove, ci ama’, in Un insieme di tracce - Sei poeti italiani/Huellas – Seis poetas italianos. Trad. Rocío Bolaños (Formarti), pp. 24-27.
• Toto, P. (2023) ‘The Only Thing I Accept Is Despair’, in Queer Life, Queer Love 2 (Muswell Press)
• Toto, P. (2022) ‘esilio’, in Interno Poesia, 22 September 2022.
• Toto, P. (2022) ‘Is My Body Mine’, in fourteen poems, Issue 8, September 2022.
• Toto, P. (2022) ‘poetiche del corpo’ [extracts], in Atelierpoesia.it, 7 July 2022.
• Toto, P. (2022) ‘poetiche del corpo’ [extracts], in Menabò Online, 1 July 2022.
• Toto, P, (2021) ‘Incipit’, in La Repubblica, 7 December 2021.
• Toto, P. (2021) ‘Nocturne in the Park’, in Mein schwules Auge 18.
• Toto, P. (2021) ‘Let No Man Put Asunder’, in Untitled: Voices, Issue 3, vol. 1.
• Toto, P. (2021) ‘House Trilogy & The Life of Others’, in Queerlings, Issue 2.
• Toto, P. (2020) ‘I’m in Love with a Rubberman’, in Seek Poetry, Issue 1.
• Toto, P. (2020) ‘Not Everyone I Love Dies’, in harana poetry, Issue 5.

Published translations into Italian

Individual poems 

• 2026–2022 in Atelierpoesia.it: https://atelierpoesia.it/tag/piero-toto/
• 2024–2022 in Laboratori Poesia: https://www.laboratoripoesia.it/piero-toto-page/
• 2024 – Frantumato [‘Broken’], by Nathan Evans, in harana poetry, 29 August 2024
• 2024 – La nostra lingua sgocciola [‘Our language drips’] by Simon Madrell, in harana poetry, 29 August 2024.

Essays

• 2009 – ‘Tutti amano l’egemonia: la mascolinità nelle sitcom in prima serata [Everybody Loves Hegemony: Masculinity in Prime-Time Sitcoms]’, in Susan Petrilli and David Buchbinder (ed.), Masculinities. Identità maschili e appartenenze culturali, Milan: Mimesis, p. 95-99.
• 2009 – ‘Eccitazione, climax sessuale, inibizione sessuale: feticismo erotico, vita stretta e tacchi a spillo [Sexual Tension, Sexual Climax and Sexual Confinement: Erotic Fetishism, Small Waists and Spiked Heels]’, in Susan Petrilli and David Buchbinder (ed.), Masculinities. Identità maschili e appartenenze culturali, Milan: Mimesis, p. 47-52.

Grants, funding and awards

• 2019: Staff Award 2019 ‘Best overall satisfaction performance in the NSS’ (£1000), London Metropolitan University
• 2019: Winner of the London Metropolitan University Students’ Union Award (Outstanding Academic Member of Staff for the Guildhall School of Business and Law)
• 2018: Nominated for the London Metropolitan University Students’ Union Award (Outstanding Academic Member of Staff)
• 2016: Staff Excellence Award 2016 (£2000), London Metropolitan University
• 2014: Higher-Education-Academy-funded (£5000) symposium organised at London Metropolitan University 2012: Nominated for the London Metropolitan University Student-Led Teaching Award (SLTA)
• 2012: British-Council-funded (£5,000) study on Translation and Language Learning. Participants: London Metropolitan University, SDL and the Russian State University for the Humanities. Aim: to explore opportunities for providing a professional development course for Russian/English translators with a special focus on the implementation of translation software and relevant electronic tools for translators.

Professional activities

Ad hoc Italian consultant for the Chartered Institute of Linguists; until 2021, external examiner at Swansea University (MA Professional Translation, MA Translation and Interpreting, BA Modern Languages, Translation and Interpreting) and University of Westminster (PG MA Translation and Interpreting, MA Specialised Translation).

He is a member of London Metropolitan University's AI in Teaching and Learning Steering Group (March 2024–present) and Gender and Sexual Diversity Research Group (November 2023–present). He is also a member of 'L'Orientale' University of Naples' I-LanD (Identity, Language and Diversity) Research Centre (December 2017–present) and sits on the scientific committee of Rivista Italiana di Antropologia Applicata (January 2022–present).

Piero is an editorial team member and active translator for Atelier (online poetry magazine, March 2023–present) and is the co-editor of Atelier International (April 2025–present) - a multilingual poetry magazine - overseeing submission review, selection, editing of poems in multiple languages, and publication workflows across print and digital formats.

Conference contrubutions

• April 2025: Delegate speaker at the Translation and Language Education in the Age of AI: Theoretical and Practical Frameworks conference, The University of Manchester.
• November 2024: Invited roundtable co-leader at APTIS Unconference (Warwick University), to present the early findings on a co-authored study on genAI, critical thinking and translation assessment performance at London Met.
• June 2021: Delegate speaker at 11th biennial conference of the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA11), Queen Mary University of London. Title of paper: 'Queering Sexual Health Translation: Some Pedagogical Considerations'.
• January 2021: Member of the Scientific Committee of the XXV Congreso Internacional del Instituto Universitario de Estudios Feministas y de Género Purificación Escribano (IUEFGPE), Universitat Jaume I (Spain).
• March 2020: Member of the organising committee, 'Enhancing Employability in Translator Training', London Metropolitan University.
• October 2017: Speaker at University College London's Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS). Title of seminar: 'What Are Words Worth? Reflections on Queer Language, Censorship and Translation'.
• November 2016: Delegate speaker at 16th Portsmouth Translation Conference 'Translation and Interpreting: Learning Beyond the Comfort Zone', University of Portsmouth. Title of paper: 'Flipped Classrooms & Translation Environment Tools: A Love Story'.
• July 2014: Member of the organising committee, 'Translation in the Digital Age' symposium, London Metropolitan University.
• June 2011: Delegate speaker at 1st International T3L Conference 'The Coming of Age of Translation Technologies in Translation Studies', Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Paper delivered: 'Challenges and Constraints in Designing a Localization Module for a Multilingual Cohort'.

Esteem factors

• March 2025: Invited speaker – 'Queering Sexual Health Translation Pedagogy' at Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, The University of Edinburgh.
• March 2025: Invited speaker at the Vice Chancellor's Expert Summit 'Reimagining Teaching and Learning: Blended learning across different modes, insights from the Pandemic and working in partnership with students and communities', London Met.
• March 2025: Seminar co-leader – Integrating Generative AI in a Vocational, Industry-Oriented Course, Centre for Teaching Enhancement at London Met. · January 2025: Invited speaker – intensive course 'Translators as gender-responsive agents', London Met.
• June 2024: Invited co-speaker at a transcreation company to deliver a talk to their translation and localisation team on the subjects of gender translation and queer translation.
• April 2023: Invited guest on the Queer Roots and Routes podcast to discuss migrant experiences of sexual language and translation [available on Apple Podcasts].
• April 2023: Panellist during the Women in Localization event "Making a Living as a Freelance Translator", to discuss translator employability and training.
• February 2023: Panellist during The Love Tank's 'Dirty Duolingo' event on the politics of sexual language (for queer migrants and queer ethnic minorities).