F. Derya Agis was born in Ankara, Turkey. Currently, she is an independent scholar. She was a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. She used to be a visiting scholar there in the summer of 2010. She has a Ph.D. in Italian Language and Literature from Ankara University. She has an M.S. in Social Anthropology from the Middle East Technical University, an M.A. in English Linguistics from Hacettepe University, and a B.A. in Italian Language and Literature. She attended a post-graduate course on literary translation at the University of Bari. She taught several courses in the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Girne American University in the 2007-2008 academic year.