It is almost one year since our colleague, friend, and former Chair of ACIS left us. We have asked former ACIS Chairs, Management Committee Members, and awardees to share their memories and thoughts. We are hoping to add more statements from anyone who knew David, especially while he was supporting ACIS. If you would like to share your memories with the ACIS community, please write to admin@acis.org.au . 

Two promising early career scholars – Lauren Murphy and Julia Pelosi-Thorpe – were the recipients of ACIS Save Venice Fellowships. Delayed due to COVID travel restrictions, they were finally able to access their Fellowships in 2022. Here they both reflect on their time in Venice and the benefits of the Fellowship to their respective research projects.

ACIS is delighted to announce that Professor Andrea Rizzi has been appointed the new Chair of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies. He leads a renewed Management Committee with several new appointees who start their terms of office this year.

After a hiatus of three years due to travel restrictions, ACIS is delighted once again to be able to offer its Postgraduate Scholarships for Research in Italy. Two promising postgraduate students have been awarded scholarships in the current round: Brigette De Poi and Laura Di Blasi.

ACIS is delighted to announce the publication of Linetto Basilone's monograph, The Distance to China: Twentieth-Century Italian Travel Narratives of Patriotism, Commitment and Disillusion (1898-1985) (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022) , which was supported in part through an ACIS 2022 Publishing Grant .

The ACIS Management Committee is delighted to announce that the inaugural David Moss Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Italian Studies in the region has been awarded to Emeritus Professor Nerida Newbigin. Professor Newbigin was presented with the prize by ACIS Patron, Santo Cilauro, at the recent 11 th ACIS Conference in Perth, on 13 December 2022. This prize is named to honour Professor David Moss, the founding Chair of the ACIS Management Committee, co-convenor of the first ACIS Conference held in Canberra at the ANU, and a tireless, enthusiastic and innovative champion of the cause of Italian Studies in Australasia. David was Professor of Italian and European Studies at Griffith University before achieving a rare distinction as a foreigner, the appointment as Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Milan (the only foreign faculty member of a staff of 230).

The latest book by Dr Natalie Tomas, Selected Letters, 1514-1543, of Maria Salviati de' Medici , will be launched on 16 September, 6-7pm AEST by Professor Carolyn James. In 2020 Natalie Tomas was awarded one of the inaugural ACIS Publishing Grants to support the publication of Selected Letters, 1514-1543, of Maria Salviati de' Medici (University of Chicago Press, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Toronto Series, 2022). We are now delighted to see the final product. Recent years have seen increasing interest in the life and influence of Maria Salviati de' Medici . Maria Salviati’s surviving correspondence documents a life spent close to the centres of Medici power in Florence and Rome, giving witness to its failures, resurrection, and eventual triumph. Presented here for the first time in English, this book is a representative sample of Maria’s surviving letters that document her remarkable life through a tumultuous period of Italian Renaissance history. While she earned the exasperation of some, she gained the respect of many more. Maria ended her life as an influential dowager, powerful intercessor for local Tuscans of all strata, and wise elder in Duke Cosimo I’s court. The Monash Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) is hosting the launch of Dr Tomas's book. Professor Carolyn James , Director of the Centre and an ACIS Cassamarca appointee as well as member of the ACIS Management Committee, will formally launch the book and there will then be an opportunity afterwards for discussion and questions with Dr Tomas. Registration for this online event is free, and can be found here . D etails of the book and how to purchase it can be found by clicking on the image above.

ACIS is delighted to welcome Dr Barbara Pezzotti as the latest ACIS Cassamarca Appointee in European Languages/Italian at Monash University. Monash University holds two of the prestigious ACIS Cassamarca positions. One of those positions is currently held by Professor Carolyn James . For the last several years the other position was held by Assoc. Professor Francesco Ricatti . However Francesco Ricatti's recent appointment to an Associate Professorship in Italian Studies at the Australian National University has opened up an opportunity for one of the ACIS community's most engaged and engaging members, Dr Barbara Pezzotti, to be inaugurated into the position. Dr Pezzotti gained her PhD at Victoria University of Wellington. She is also a Chercheur associé at the Centre de la Méditerranée Moderne et Contemporaine (Université Côte d’Azur). Her research interests include crime fiction and popular culture, literary geographies and utopian literature. She has published on Italian, Spanish, New Zealand and Scandinavian crime fiction. She is the author of The Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction. A Bloody Journey (Teaneck, NJ: The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012); Politics and Society in Italian Crime Fiction: An Historical Overview (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014); and Investigating Italy’s Past through Crime Fiction, Films and TV Series: Murder in the Age of Chaos (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016). Dr Pezzotti is the co-editor (with Jean Anderson and Carolina Miranda) of The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations (London: Continuum, 2012); Serial Crime Fiction. Dying for More (London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015); and Blood on the Table: Essays on Food in International Crime Fiction (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2018). Her books have been positively reviewed in the most influential journals in Italian studies and in crime fiction/popular culture. They are also on the reading lists of crime fiction courses offered by UK and European universities. She is also the author of 24 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 book chapters. Her current research project is provisionally entitled “Mediterranean Crime Fiction: Place, Gender, Identity”.