She is passionate about languages and literature. Her journey in literary studies began with a three-year degree in Latin American and North American Studies at Ca' Foscari. Interested in the world of the Americas, she graduated in 2008 with a thesis on comparative literature, with a study between the work of María Luisa Bombal and William Faulkner. The journey continued with a Master's degree in Latin American Studies at the University of Salamanca. Here, too, the comparative interest between the Americas was the leitmotif of her master's thesis: Mexico-U.S. Border Literature, from which the essay "Al otro lado de Heriperto Yépez: Percepciones desde y sobre la frontera México-Estados Unidos" (2014) was published.

With interest and civic engagement, she began to analyze the topic of borders, migration routes, and migrant rights in more depth. At the end of her second master's degree at the Free University of Berlin in North American Studies (2015), she submitted a comparative literature thesis on the Mexico-U.S. border, which led her to investigate the political and sociological discourse of borders in detail, mainly from the perspective of Chicana and U.S. border literature. Her academic interest and commitment to the dissemination of ideas about borders has led her to present her findings at numerous conferences in Spain, Italy, Germany, and beyond.

The academic journey culminated in a dissertation on the Mediterranean as a border in migration literature published from 2005 to the present. The analysis focused primarily on the symbolism of the sea as a bordering barrier for migrants attempting to cross from North Africa to European shores. It was not only a literary thesis, but also a political one, highlighting how the use of the fluidity of the sea and its sea nomos is used to block migrants during the crossing through inhuman actions that violate their rights. The analysis throughout her dissertation emphasized the intimate connections between the geopolitical implications of border imaginaries and aesthetic practice.

Many articles and essays have been published in this regard, including "Necropolitics at Sea: A Reading from Mediterranean Border Fiction" (2023), "Crimes at the Maritime Border: Miguel Pajares's Aguas de Venganza [Waters of Revenge]", (2023), "The Mediterranean Sea as b/order space in African Titanics: A Geo-Literary Analysis" (2022), "B/ordering the Mediterranean Sea, aesthetics and Geopolitics" (2020), "Speculations on the Mediterranean Borderscape: Le Baiser de Lampedusa" (2019) and finally the book of her dissertation, "The Mediterranean Sea as Border Space: A Geo-Literary Analysis".

Her interest in the relationship between geopolitics, spatial order, and aesthetics continued after her doctorate. She worked on a chapter of the forthcoming book "Hospitality at the Mediterranean Border: Giulio Cavalli's Carnaio [Carnage]," which deals with the theme of hospitality/hostipitality towards migrants upon their arrival after crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

For Silvia Ruzzi, the importance of literature in the analysis of society and culture is fundamental. Literary productions can be expressions that rethink important issues that drive global politics, continue the search for thinking space, and explore ever-new ways of writing, seeing, and perceiving space and its role in societies. In some cases, fiction is a far more plausible representation of human feelings and understandings than many of the artifacts used by academic researchers.

During her academic studies and between master's degrees, she worked as a translator, as a teacher of English in Madrid, of Italian for foreigners at Cà Foscari University, and as a teacher of Italian in Berlin. She spent a year in Australia working for Co.As.It (the Italian Australian Welfare Association), organizing workshops to promote Italian culture abroad.