Jacopo Francesco Mascoli

About

I am currently a PhD student in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick, fully funded by a Chancellor’s International Scholarship, under the supervision of Prof. Jennifer BurnsLink opens in a new window and Prof. Karl Schoonover.

Research

I am an interdisciplinary scholar whose research investigates the intersection of cinema, labour, and socio-political change, situated at the crossroads of Italian Studies, Film Studies, and Labour Studies. My doctoral research is carried out across the Department of Italian Studies and the Department of Film & TV Studies. My doctoral dissertation, The Working Class Goes to Hell: Visions of Labour in Contemporary Italian Cinema (2006–2016), funded by the Chancellor’s International Scholarship, examines how contemporary Italian cinema portrays, interrogates, and positions the shifting paradigms of labour in the wake of the 2007–08 global financial crisis. Challenging the common assumption that the shift from industrial, material labour to a service-based economy is smooth and linear, I argue that Italy exemplifies a violent convergence of accelerated deindustrialisation and the rise of new precarious forms of labour. In a decade marked by global political instability and austerity, my project traces how Italian cinema functioned as a site of resistance, where documentary, popular, and art-house films alike reassessed and contested the social and economic

consequences of the financial crisis. By developing an innovative interdisciplinary approach that engages with film analysis, labour history, social theory, and law, I propose a new framework for understanding how cinema visualises and challenges contemporary globalisation, deindustrialisation, and proliferation of work into everyday life. Ultimately, my project aims to reassess the relationship between film and labour, urging a reconsideration of the visual politics and aesthetics through which work is represented in contemporary Italian cinema and beyond. In doing so, my research illuminates cinema’s enduring power to narrate social change, reclaim collective agency and envision new futures of work in an age of uncertainty.

Since the beginning of my doctoral studies, my research has been supported by several awards, including conference and event grants from the Society for Italian Studies, the British Association for Film and Television Studies, the Warwick Humanities Research Centre, and the Journal of European Studies. I have presented my work at international conferences in Film Studies, Italian Studies and Labour Studies more broadly, such as the Screen Studies Conference (2025), the BAFTSS Conference (2025, 2024), the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies Conference (2024), the NECS Conference (2023), and OBERT (Observatoire Européen des Récits du Travail) (2023), the Populist Screen Conference (2025). Alongside presenting, I have developed strong organisational and editorial experience. I co-organised the conference In Search of Lost Futures: Visual Narratives of Economic Migration (Warwick, 2024) and the Society for Italian Studies Postgraduate Conference (Oxford, 2023), from which I co-edited the proceedings published in Notes on Italian Studies. In March 2024, I received the Hesburgh Library Research Award from the Center for Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame, which funded a one-month research stay there in April 2025. I am also an active member of the Cinematic Precarity Research Network and the Warwick Italian Cinema Group, co-convening seminars and book presentations on Italian film scholarship and film studies in general.

The worldwide financial crash of 2007 not only led to the failure of many banks and financial institutions in Western countries; it also brought about negative changes to the labour system. In fact, while the financial sector was eventually rescued by massive bailout operations, the labour-based economy suffered a number of setbacks. By creating social insecurity, these negative developments within liberal democracies also contributed to a growing distrust of politicians and governments, which is one of the hallmarks of the current political climate. In this context, Italy is particularly revealing as a case study because it was the only country in Europe to transition to a technocratic government that enacted sweeping reforms to the labour system, which led to increased redundancies, precarity and inequality.

Research Interests

• Labour & Society
• Italian Cinema
• World Cinemas
• Film Theory
• Cultural Studies

Teaching

Since 2022, I have offered undergraduate lectures and seminars as part of the following modules:

IT107: Advanced Italian

IT 201: Intermediate Italian (Oral Classes)

F1204-15: World Cinema

LN323: Mediterranean Cinema

IT314: Italian Cinema Individual Perspectives

In 2025/2026, I teach IT 201: Intermediate Italian (Oral Classes) and lead seminars as a GTA in F1204-15: World Cinema

Conferences (participation)

2024 JICMS International Conference, American University of Rome, 13-15 June 2024 (paper accepted).

• 12th BAFTSS Conference, Labour and Screen Media, University of Sussex, 3-2 April 2024 (paper accepted).

2023 1st OBERT Conference, “Narrating Labour. Posture and Positionality”, Aix-Marseille University, 28-30 June 2023.

• Summer School “Mediating Italy in Global Culture”, University of Bologna, Rimini, 19-23 June 2023.
• The NECS 2023 Conference, Care, University of Oslo, Oslo, 13-17 June 2023.

Conferences (organisation)

2024
"In Search of Lost Futures". Visual Narratives of Economic Migration, funded by School of Modern Languages and Culture, Humanities Research Centre (University of Warwick), British Association of Film, Television, Screen Studies, Journal of European Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, 19-20 September (co-organised with Silvia Vari).

Italian Cinema Seminar with Valentina Re (Link Campus University of Rome), University of Warwick, Coventry, 22-23 January (co-organised with Ilaria Puliti and Luca Peretti).

2023
Society of Italian Studies PG Colloquium, University of Oxford-University of Warwick, Oxford, 2 December (co-organised with Gennaro Ambrosino and Frances Clemente).

Italian Cinema Seminar with Mauro Resmini (University of Maryland), University of Warwick, Coventry, 30 November, 5-6 pm (co-organised with Ilaria Puliti and Luca Peretti).

Italian Cinema Seminar with Hilary Neroni (University of Vermont), University of Warwick, Coventry, 26 October, 5-6 pm (co-organised with Ilaria Puliti and Luca Peretti).

Other roles

Co-convenor of the Italian Cinema GroupLink opens in a new window

Member of BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television, Screen Studies), SIS (Society of Italian Studies), and NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies).

Publications

• Review of Carlo Baghetti (Volume editor), Jim Carter (Volume editor), Lorenzo Marmo (Volume editor), Italian Industrial Literature and Film. Perspectives on the Representation of Postwar Labor, Pieterlen: Peter Lang, 2021, pp. 554+VIV, «Italian Studies», Vol. 78, 1, 2023.
• Review of Simone Brioni. L’Italia, l’altrove. Luoghi, spazi, attraversamenti nel cinema e nella
  letteratura sulla migrazione. Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2022. Pp. xii + 184, «Annali d’italianistica», Vol. 41, 2023.

• Review of J. Rancière, Lo spettatore emancipato, Derive Approdi,
  Roma 2018, «Lessico di etica pubblica», 2 (2018), pp. 131-134.
• Review of A. Badiou, Trump o del fascismo democratico, Meltemi, Roma 2018, «Lessico di etica pubblica», 1 (2018), pp. 151-155.

Scholarships and Awards

Qualifications