About

I am a Professor in the Film and Television Studies Department. As a specialist in film and media and cultural and political history, my work tends to focus on cinema as a social practice and as an industry, as well as on film as entertainment and propaganda.

I have written mostly about the relations between cinema and television, politics and consumption in Italy from the Fascist period to the present, as well as the Italian and European star system, and the concept of glamour.

In recent years, I have been principal investigator on three large AHRC research projects. The first of these was concerned with the personality cult of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The second, run in partnership with the Cineteca di Bologna, dealt with the role of producers and production practices in the history of the Italian film industry. Read more about this project here. My current project explores the role of women workers in the Italian film industry between the 1940s and the 1980s. This is also in partnership with the Cineteca di Bologna. Here is a link to the project website: Women in Italian Film Production

I have been a visiting professor at Sapienza University in Rome. Sciences-Po in Paris and the Université de Paris II and X. I was Chair of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy from 2009-14 and 2015-16.

Currently, I am an associate editor of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies and a member of the editorial committee of several journals, including Modern Italy and Storia e problemi contemporanei.

Research interests

I have published seven books, three edited books, several journal special issues and many articles and book chapters. These focus on areas such as mass culture and Italian Fascism, the Italian Communist Party and its cultural policies, the Italian film industry, the history and theory of glamour, Hollywood’s impact in Europe, feminine beauty and national identity, representing Mussolini in cinema and television, the aesthetics and politics of Silvio Berlusconi, and cinematic Rome with special reference to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Peer-reviewed articles have appeared in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Modern Italy and other journals. Four of my books have also been published in Italian and two in other languages.

My most recent research has focused on Italian film stars. In two books, Mussolini’s Dream Factory and Fame amid the Ruins, I explore the star system of the Fascist period and in the immediate postwar years when neorealism was on the ascendancy. I discuss the specificities of Italian stars, the political and industrial context in which they operated and their impact on the public.

I am currently working on an edited book about the Italian film industry and the role of producers like Dino De Laurentiis and Franco Cristaldi and another edited volume about women in Italian television. My latest single-authored volume about the the posthumous life of Mussolini will be published by Oxford University Press in 2025.

Teaching

I teach a range of modules including Film History: Italian Cinema and Biopics.

PhD Supervision

I have supervised projects on the Italian magazine industry and the cinematic imaginary, Italian silent cinema, Visconti’s politics and aesthetics, Italian film stardom, and ruralism and modernity in Italian cinema.

I am happy to receive proposals on most aspects of Italian cinema, on the history of film promotion and advertising, on glamour, and on cinema and dictatorships.

Selected Publications

Books

Recent Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

• ‘Alida Valli in Hollywood: From Star of Fascist Cinema to “Selnick Siren”’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 32:4, 2012, 559-87
• ‘Playing the Dictator: Re-enactments of Mussolini in Film and Television’, Modern Italy, 18:1, 2013, 177-95
• ‘How Berlusconi Will Be Remembered: Notoriety, Collective Memory and the Mediatization of Posterity’, Modern Italy, 20:1, 2015, 91-109
• ‘The Question of Italian National Character and the Limits of Commedia all’italiana: Alberto Sordi, Federico Fellini and Carlo Lizzani’ in Frank Burke (ed.), A Companion to Italian Cinema, Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, 2017, pp.198-214
• 'The enduring glamour of the Parisienne' in Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), Paris in the Cinema: Beyond the Flaneur, BFI/Palgrave, London, 2018, pp.166-78.
• ‘From Mussolini to Berlusconi: Masculinity and Political Leadership in Post-War Italy’ in Christopher Fletcher et al. (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe, Basingstoke 2018, pp.435-55
• ‘Cinema e mondo dei consumi’ in Stefano Cavazza and Emanuela Scarpellini (eds) I consumi, Storia d’Italia, Annali 27, Einaudi, Turin, 2018, pp.546-64
• ‘Glamour Studies: The State of the Field’, Fashion, Film and Consumption, 8:1, 2019, 9-16
• ‘“We Have Everything to Learn from the Americans”: Film Promotion, Product Placement and Consumer Culture in Italy, 1945-1965’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:1, 2020
• ‘Alessandro Blasetti and the Rise of the Italian Film Industry, 1929-1959’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:1, 2020 (with Michela Zegna)

A full list of publications and conference papers can be found here.

Selected papers are available for download here.

Administrative roles

• Study Abroad Coordinator (2024-25)

National roles and professional associations

• Chair, Association for the Study of Modern Italy, 2009-2014, 2015-16
• Member of editorial committee: Modern Italy, Storia e problemi contemporanei and of the advisory committee Memoria e ricerca.
• Member of scientific committee ATRIUM (Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes in Urban Management)