Fumagalli obtained her undergraduate degree from the
Università Statale di Milano and completed her PhD at the
University of Sheffield in 1997. She joined the University of Essex in 1999 and was appointed Professor in 2011. She has received research funding from organizations including the
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the
Leverhulme Trust. In 2006, she was one of the principal investigators for the AHRC-funded project American Tropics: Towards A Literary Geography. In 2012, she was awarded a
Leverhulme Research Fellowship to complete her monograph On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (2015; 2018 paperback). Her monograph Derek Walcott's Painters: A Life with Pictures (2023; 2025 paperback) was supported by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust (2016–2019). Her most recent research, Painting the Caribbean 1850–1904, supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2023–24), explores the artistic and cultural exchanges between European, American, and Caribbean painters during a period of significant socio-political change.
Other work Fumagalli's monograph On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic has been associated with a series of cultural activities in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Her research on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border informed the 2021
Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact case study titled
Reconceptualizing Troubled Border Relations: Promoting Cross-Border Collaboration, Cooperation and Solidarity between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the Wake of the Denationalization Crisis in Hispaniola. The same project received the Best International Research Impact Award from the University of Essex in 2019. As an investigadora asociada (associate investigator) of OBMICA, a Santo Domingo-based organization focused on migration, human rights, and social development, Fumagalli co-organized events such as a 2017 commemoration in Comendador,
Elias Piña (Dominican Republic), marking the 80th anniversary of the
1937 massacre of Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans. Her work has also highlighted the socio-political effects of the
Dominican Constitutional Court's 2013 ruling, which resulted in the denationalization of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent. In addition to her academic and advocacy work, Fumagalli co-produced several plays by
Derek Walcott at the Lakeside Theatre, including the UK premiere of Moon-Child (2011), Pantomime (2012), and the world premiere of O Starry Starry Night (2013), directed or co-directed by Walcott. ==Honors==