Rossana Galimi

About

I am a PhD candidate in cotutelle between the University of Milan (PhD in Philosophy and Human Sciences) and the University of Warwick (PhD in Film and Television Studies) under the supervision of Profs. Barbara Grespi, Mary Harrod and Helen Wheatley.

My research interests lie at the intersection of feminist media studies, film studies, feminist philosophy, media archaeology and visual culture. I am particularly interested in horror, surveillance, women’s filmmaking, and women’s video and moving-image practices. I hold a BA (with honours) in Philosophy (2019, University of Padua, IT) and an MA (with honours) in Philosophical Sciences (2022, University of Milan, IT). My BA dissertation focused on the concept of the End of Art by the philosopher Arthur Danto and its relationship with Feminist Visual Culture, while in my MA dissertation I analysed the work of the French director Julia Ducournau and became interested in the contemporary female and feminist reworking of the horror genre. From March 2023 to March 2025 I was an affiliated member of the ERC Advanced Project AN-ICON, where I conducted research on gender issues in immersive environments, on the evolution of the horror genre in virtual reality (VR) with a feminist approach, and on gender theory between cinema and immersive media. From November 2023 to February 2026, I was a member of the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence, in which I focused on surveillance and self-surveillance in the work of female video artists, researching video archives between Italy and New York City. From March to June 2026 I carried out research support activities for the Seedcorn project Archeologie letterarie e artistiche dell’Intelligenza Artificiale. Ripensare l’immaginario tecnologico alle soglie della modernità ("Archaeologies of Artificial Intelligence in Literature and the Arts: Rethinking the Technological Imaginary at the Threshold of Modernity"), led by Prof. Giuseppe Previtali at the University of Bergamo.

I am a member of the scientific editorial board (as editorial assistant and support contact) of the international peer-reviewed journal Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal and a contributor to Cineforum, an Italian academic journal on film criticism and culture where I write on female-directed cinema and immersive experiences. Together with the AN-ICON team, I was one of the organisers of the Gradi di libertà ["Degrees of Freedom"] award for the best VR experience at Filmmaker Festival 2022 (Milan, IT). Between 2022 and 2024 I have been the curator of film selections and post-screening discussions for small festivals in Italy: Donne al centro: reinventarsi per resistere, organized by Collettivo Femminista Scledense, Cinema Campana, Marano Vicentino (both film selection and post-screening discussions); Cinema Femminile Plurale, University of Milan (film selection); Filosofilm. Proiezioni tra Cinema e Filosofia, University of Milan (post-screening discussion of Titane, Julia Ducournau, 2021). In 2024 I have been nominated by the councillor for culture of the Municipality of Bergamo (IT) as a member of the jury for the “Ermanno Olmi” Award for the Best Short Film. In 2025, together with the ARTCHAE team, I organised the event Archaeologies of telepresence, to open to the public "The Roots of the New” archive, hosted at MEET | Digital Culture Center in Milan. The event included the screening of a selection of video and telematic artworks and a discussion between the members of the research units and Maria Grazia Mattei, the founder and curator of the archive.

Research: Understanding Contemporary Horror Cinema (2014–2024) in the Light of Feminist New Materialisms, Biopolitics, and Filmic Form

My thesis argues that a feminist turn has emerged in horror cinema (2014–2024), in which genre structures are appropriated especially by women directors to foreground the female body as an object of inquiry. Methodologically, it develops a feminist framework for analysing horror, situating itself across horror theory and feminist film theory and drawing on Foucauldian feminism, feminist spatial theories, and especially Feminist New Materialism — particularly Elizabeth Grosz’s early New Materialism. It argues that transnational horror cinema provides a particularly productive field for exploring the subjectivation of the female body as characterised by unstable corporeal boundaries and as a locus of threat and transformation. The analysis therefore focuses on how cinematic form and narrative structures construct the female body, approached as the spatially situated effect of material-discursive processes.

Focusing on three different subgenres (supernatural horror, the slasher, and body horror), the project explores the construction of the female body conveyed by each subgenre and how subgeneric structures are negotiated by women directors. In framing these contemporary horror films as part of a feminist horror turn, the project contributes to both horror studies and feminist philosophy by situating the current prominence of feminist horror within a specific discursive context, proposing a material-discursive feminist account of the female body in horror films, and demonstrating how genre cinema can operate as a site for the reworking of female subjectivity, understood as a position produced within gendered regimes of biopower. The project argues that contemporary horror emerges as a key site for examining how cinema participates in the ongoing negotiation of bodies, power, and gendered experience.

Publications

An up-to-date list of my publications is available here.

Conferences and Seminars (Selection)

• "The Feminist Slasher Remake: Visibility, Vulnerability, and the Female Body in Contemporary Horror", Conference Women Filmmakers and New Feminist Cinemas in France, Great Britain, and the USA in the 21st Century, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 21–23 October 2026 (proposal accepted).
• "Per un’archeologia della computazione al femminile: pratiche e immaginari", Conference Archeologie letterarie e artistiche dell’Intelligenza Artificiale. Immaginario tecnologico, studi letterari, cultura visuale, University of Bergamo, 02 October 2026 (proposal accepted).
• "Domestic Regimes of Visibility: Feminist Video Art Toward a Media Archaeology of Telepresence", Conference NECS 2026 In|Visibile, Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, 18–20 June 2026.
• "Regimi di sorveglianza nello spazio domestico tra slasher e videoarte femminista", Conference Studiare l’horror oggi II. Media e dispositivi, University of Padua, 4 June 2026.
• "Gendered Surveillance and Domestic Space: The Work of Female Artists in Italy between Performance and Video", with Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani, Conference Surveillance and Control in Italian Audiovisual Culture, IULM University, Milan, 30–31 October 2025.
• "Revenge as Becoming-Animal: The Double Horror Reworking in Animale (Emma Benestan, 2024)", FEMME Conference Women Filmmakers: Genre and Gender in French, British and US Cinema and TV Series, University of Le Mans, 25–26 June 2025.
• "Il coming-of-age femminile tra body horror e posthuman turn", Conference Studiare l'horror oggi – Teoria e analisi di un genere, University of Bergamo, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures, 8 May 2025.
• "Resurfacing the Etruscan Past: Subterranean and Subaltern Discourses in La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023)", with Gennaro Ambrosino, Conference Underground Imaginaries: Spaces in Between, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici di Napoli, 3–5 April 2025.
• "Female Coming-of-Age as a Global Form of Body Horror", BAFTSS 2025 Conference Global Aesthetics, University of Warwick, 26–28 March 2025.
• "Between Surveillance and Self-Surveillance: the (Gendered) Horrors of the Closed Circuit", ARTCHAE #1: Inside and Outside the Circuit Conference, in the context of the two-day event BETWEEN BODIES AND CIRCUITS: Archaeologies of Extension and Exposure. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 14 March 2025.
• "Un-tying the Patriarchal Family Through Abjection: The Morphing Pregnant Body in Titane", Cine-Excess 2024 In-Person Symposium Blood Ties: The Family in Cult and Horror Cinema, Birmingham School of Art, 25 October 2024.
• “Emerging Horror: Excessive Female Bodies Between Cinema and Virtual Reality”, NECS Graduate Workshop Emerging Media: Exploring Post-Cinema, University of Economics, İzmir, 26 June 2024.
• Artist Talk "Measuring Mistakes" in dialogue with Dr. Ulrike Kuchner (University of Nottingham), International Conference "PHOTOGRAPHS FROM OUTER SPACE. A female archaeology of image-data", University of Milan, 13 December 2023.

Organisation of Conferences and Seminars

• Conference ARTCHAE#2: Archaeologies of Telematic Presence. Curated by Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 22-23 September 2025. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence.
• Conference ARTCHAE#1: Inside and Outside the Circuit, in the context of the two-day event BETWEEN BODIES AND CIRCUITS: Archaeologies of Extension and Exposure. Curated by Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 14 March 2025. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence.
• Seminar “Slaughtering the Patriarchy: Bending the (Closed) Circuit in Moving Images”, including the presentation of the book by Pier Maria Bocchi So cosa hai fatto. Scenari, pratiche e sentimenti dell’horror moderno and a roundtable with: Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi, Dr. Francesco Iezzi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 2 December 2024. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence.
• Seminar “Rebirth, Revival, and Afterlives: The Gothic in Contemporary Film and Television”. Speaker: Dr. Federica Perazzini (Sapienza University of Rome); Chair: Arianna De Gasperis (Sapienza University of Rome); Respondent: Rossana Galimi. University of Warwick, Department of Film and Television Studies, 19 November 2024. Funded by the HRC’s Visiting Speakers’ Fund.
• International Conference PHOTOGRAPHS FROM OUTER SPACE. A female archaeology of image-data, University of Milan, 11-13 December 2023 (co-organised with Rosa Cinelli and Melania Mariconda, curated by Prof. Barbara Grespi and Prof. Luca Guzzardi).