ACIS is delighted to announce that Dr Emma Barron is the new ACIS-University of Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow, awarded for her project ‘Modern Women: Mass Culture and Social Change in Post-War Italy’.

Dr Emma Barron, the new ACIS-University of Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow

Emma Barron may be familiar to readers of this 'Recent News' blog. Earning her doctorate at the University of Sydney, Emma was appointed to an ACIS Honorary Research Fellowship in 2017, and in 2019 was a recipient of an ACIS Save Venice Fellowship.  Amongst her many publications, her Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950-1970: Mona Lisa Covergirl (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) analyses the role of high culture in the formation of Italian mass culture.

Emma's postdoctoral project, 'Modern Women: Mass Culture and Social Change in Post-War Italy’ continues her interrogation of Italian mass culture. The project proposes to examine the pivotal role of Italy’s mass culture ‘boom’ in the circulation of ideas about modern Italy through magazines, television, and cinema. The project will write a history of post-war social change by exploring women’s access to ideas about the modern world and their place in it. The research analyses the impact of mass culture on audiences and the attempts by industry, the Italian State, and the Catholic Church to promote, manage or limit access to new ideas. 

Letter to an advice column in the magazine Famiglia Cristiana 19 April 1964.

Emma is the second ACIS-University of Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow, following on from Dr Laura Lori who completed her fellowship in 2021.

Emma's position will be located within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, and ACIS remains incredibly grateful to the Faculty for its enthusiastic support and co-sponsorship of this postdoctoral initiative.