Research

The position of non-stipendiary Honorary Research Associate was established by ACIS in 2013 and is designed for two categories of appointee:

• Junior Italianist scholars based in Australia or New Zealand with significant academic achievements but with only short-term, casual, or no university employment.
• Senior Italianist scholars visiting Australia and New Zealand. A proposal to appoint an Honorary Research Associate may be made at any time by any senior Italianist scholar working in Australasia. The case for appointment and the candidate's cv should be sent to the ACIS Chair who will forward it to the Management Committee for discussion. The Management Committee welcomes the input of HRAs on any issue related to the promotion of Italian Studies and seeks to involve them as far as possible in its work.

Please note that the appointment of ACIS Honorary Research Associates (both senior and junior) is currently under review.

Junior ACIS Honorary Research Associates:

For junior scholars the minimum level of academic achievement for appointment as an HRA is normally a PhD in any area of Italian Studies (literature and translation studies, visual and performance studies, languages and linguistics, history, cultural studies, politics, economics and social studies).

Each junior HRA will be supported by a mentor from the Management Committee. 

Senior ACIS Honorary Research Associates:

For senior scholars the term of appointment as an HRA is generally for the duration of their visit to Australasia. Applications may be made from senior Australasian Italianist scholars for funding in support of such visits which might cover, for instance, internal flights within Australasia, conference attendance fees, workshop/seminar support. 

ACIS does not generally support the cost of international flights in bringing such scholars to Australasia.

Each year ACIS has allocated a sum of monies to support initiatives or activities involving HRAs. HRAs have been invited to submit proposals related to their project which are evaluated by the Management Committee. Such proposals may include but are not limited to: assistance towards publications; organisation of a workshop, mini-conference or seminar or lecture series; development of new forms of academic collaboration; and promotion of Italian Studies to wider public audiences. In each case the funds are intended to support activities of value both to HRAs themselves and to Italian Studies generally.

The initial term as a junior HRA is 3 years. 

Current Honorary Research Associates

The appointment of ACIS HRAs  is currently under review.

Previous Honorary Research Associates

Simone Marino (2020-2023)

Emma Barron (2017-2022)

Sally Grant (2015-2018)

Josh Brown (2015-2018 )

Alessandro Carrieri (2015-2018)

Laura Lori  (2014-2018)

Theodore Ell (2013-2016)

Barbara Pezzotti (2013-2017)

Visiting Honorary Research Associates

Liz Horodowich (2019)

Deanna Shemek (2019)

Kaha Mohamed Aden (2016)

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah (2016)

John Foot (2015-2016)

Luca Somigli (2015)

Kate Bentz (2015)

Paolo Bartoloni (2014)

Michael Wyatt (2013)

Current Research Project:

2022-2023 -  "Reframing, Revisiting or Removing: Making Fascism Visible in Contemporary Italy"

Debates in Italy on the physical remnants of fascism and imperialism that have intermittently surfaced in recent decades have been reinvigorated over the past couple of years in the context of international controversies over the fate of monuments to discredited figures and ideologies. In Italy, such controversies have historically not resulted in a concerted strategy to deal with painful memories, as public opinion moved on, marginalised the challenges, or coalesced around a deliberately ambiguous or short-term response. 

The response (and lack of response) to the monuments, statues, landmarks or street names that reference or even celebrate Italy’s fascist and imperial past, demonstrates how hard it is for the country to separate the management of its fascist legacies from wider discourses on the nation’s history, where group memories, identities and politics intersect. The project will investigate this nexus.

Project Coordinators: 

Giacomo Lichtner (Victoria University of Wellington)

Sally Hill (Victoria University of Wellington)

Project Group:

Nick Carter (Australian Catholic University)

Giuliana Minghelli (affiliation with McGill)

Markus Würzer (Max PLanck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle an der Saale)

Daphné Budasz (European University Institute, Florence)

Previous Research Project:

2018-2020  - "Textiles, Trade, and Meaning in the Courts of Northern Italy during the time of Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua" 

This digital humanities research cluster sought to tease out the what, the how, and the why of the clothing, textiles, and accoutrements of the courts of northern Italy and beyond by focusing on the sartorial aspects of Isabella d'Este's visual self-representations. As Marchioness of Mantua, Isabella was one of the foremost consumers and widely imitated icons of style of the Renaissance. 

The organizational focus of the project  was one of the most well-known images of Isabella, her portrait by Titian, located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (completed 1534-6). Viewers are invited to start their interaction with Isabella and her clothing by homing in on this portrait in high resolution. Then follow a series of explanatory essays by academics and curators working in early modern studies from around the globe. These are divided into three themes: Fashioning Isabella; Portraying Isabella; and Contextualising Isabella. 

The project's outcomes are presented on a website, Fashioning Isabella, hosted within the University of Melbourne’s Emporium Research Hub, and is allied to the award-winning digital humanities site ‘The Isabella d’Este Archive’ or  IDEA produced and co-directed by Deanna Shemek and Roberta Piccinelli with several other scholars. The ‘Isabella d’Este Archive’ takes as its focus the extraordinary corpus of letters written by the marchioness and explores her broad patronage in a range of fields. 

Project Steering Committee 

Catherine Kovesi (University of Melbourne), Convenor

Jennifer McFarland (University of Cambrdige), Coordinator and content editor

Deanna Shemek  (University of California at Irvine)

John Gagné (The University of Sydney)

Carolyn James (Monash University)

Anne Dunlop (The University of Melbourne)

Timothy McCall (Villanova University, Philadelphia)

Carl Villis (National Gallery of Victoria)

Current Research Project:

2022-2023 - "Italian Cinemas in Melbourne: From Post War Migration to The Movie Show (SBS)"

This project aims to provide a comprehensive overview of ways in which Italian language cinemas contributed to the reception and distribution of Italian cinema in Melbourne from the Post-WWII and mass migration periods until the advent of SBS in the late 1970s.

Although Italian language cinemas were made redundant with the institution of SBS and the digital and streaming formats that followed, for a great number of Italians migrating to Australia in the early 1950s, they represented an important way to connect to their cultural heritage while also providing significant social and recreational opportunities. In the pre SBS period various Melbourne cinemas and improvised screening spaces were dedicated to screening films, and filmed sporting events, exclusively in Italian language - targeting the city’s large Italian speaking population. Consequently, the Italian language cinemas contributed to reinforcing the developing multi-culturalism of Melbourne.

The project will analyse the films screened, source primary accounts of their reception, and articulate an understanding of the curatorial aspects of their distribution and exhibition. This study will also help to ascertain the influence that the presence of Italian cinemas had on Italian and/or Australian filmmakers and the wider Melbourne community. To this end, the study will include analysis of media reports, artefacts related to the years of Italian cinemas in Melbourne such as posters, advertisements, foyer information and photographs, as well as personal recollections of members of the Italian language cinema-going communities.

Project coordinators:

Mark Nicholls (University of Melbourne) 

Elisabetta Ferrari (University of Melbourne)

Santo Cilauro (Working Dog Productions)

Project's website: here.  

Previous Research Project:

2018-2020 - "Indelible (Eng)/ Indelibile (It): The Representation of (In)visible Violence Against Women and their Resistance"

This research cluster analysed how the arts can make visible the often invisible and yet indelible acts of violence perpetrated against women every day and, by linking them, demonstrate just how necessary it is to break this chain. Visual and performing arts are instrumental in exposing the complexity of the numerous forms that violence against women and girls can take in the contemporary world, as well as exploring new and old forms of resistance. The cluster's initiatives strived to contribute to the ‘glocal’ conversation on the topic and, at the same time, raise awareness of the global extent of the problem and the ways in which both such violence and resistance to it are represented in the visual and performing arts in Italy.

With the visual and performing arts as the research group’s focus, researchers, artists and performers were welcomed who could stimulate debate and developments in public opinion around violence against women. The cluster organized an eponymous interdisciplinary international conference-cum-mini Italian theatre festival at the University of Flinders in 2019 centred on the #MeToo movement. This  was followed by 'Resisting Violence' - a Seminar on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women held at the University of Sydney in 2020. The cluster's research outcomes  include a special issue of the journal Fulgor (forthcoming), and the book Atti di accusa: testi teatrali e interviste sulla rappresentazione della violenza contro le donne (Aracne, 2021).

Project Steering committee:

Luciana d’Arcangeli (Flinders University, South Australia), Convenor

Giorgia Alù (The University of Sydney)

Daniela Cavallaro (The University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Sally Hill (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

Claire Kennedy (Griffith University, Queensland)

Current Research Project:

2022-2023 - "From Lockdown to Liberation: Invisible Cities in Pandemic Times. An Ekphrastic and Multimodal Research Group Project"

Using an interdisciplinary and multimodal theoretical framework (adaptation studies, digital humanities, and graphic design) and adopting Calvino’s thematic framework in Invisible Cities, this project explores the emotional and narrative links between crisis and creativity and between liminality and liberation.

Italian nationals living in 30 countries will be invited to submit an image of their city in lockdown along with a 280-word tweet that describes the image and a title that uses one of the themes used by Calvino in Invisible Cities (cities and memory; cities and desire; cities and signs, thin cities, trading cities; cities and eyes; cities and names; cities and the dead; cities and the sky; continuous cities; hidden cities). The winning entries will then be digitally augmented to liberate each city from the paralysis of lockdown by bringing it back in time or into the future. The corpus of reflections generated by participants and the research group will be analysed to shed light on the processes of multimodal memory and storytelling.

Project coordinators:

Marco Sonzogni (Victoria University of Wellington)

Daniel Brown (Victoria University of Wellington)

Sydney Shep (Victoria University of Wellington)

Yanyuan Liang (Victoria University of Wellington)

Alice Charles (Victoria University of Wellington)

Julia Pelosi-Thorpe (University of Melbourne)

Previous Research Project:

2018-2020 - "Multilingual and Transcultural Landscapes" 

This research cluster's theme explored the ways in which Italian language and culture interact and intermingle with a multiplicity of other languages and cultures, not only within Italy but also beyond. Landscapes – whether natural, urban, rural, social, psychological or fantastical – are delineated, even created, by the perspective and framing of the beholder. Thus, this theme covered a variety of perspectives and subjectivities. The group explored Italian Studies within a framework of transculturality which views cultures as permeable, goes beyond traditional national or cultural boundaries, and questions classic binaries such as migrant/host, or native/non-native, instead focusing on exchange. Italy today is a heteroglossic landscape, inscribed with the presence of multiple languages and codes, as are the destination countries of the Italian diaspora, including Australia and New Zealand, where the Research Group’s activities are primarily based. Topics that were open for exploration were: social cohesion and integration; the modern city; communicative practices such as code-switching or translanguaging; the co-existence of multiple registers or varieties of Italian in particular geographical areas or social spheres (including the language classroom); ways in which people appropriate, resignify or reclaim public spaces; antipodean perceptions and experiences of Italianness; the stories people tell in and about their landscapes or neighbourhoods.

This cluster centred its activities on a conference in which discussions and debates were enriched by contributions from a wide range of disciplines and sub-disciplines, including literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics, language teaching, translation studies, anthropology, and migration studies. 

Project Steering committee 2018-2020:

Brigid Maher (La Trobe University, Melbourne), Convenor

Gregoria Manzin (La Trobe University, Melbourne)

Claudia Bernardi (Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand)

Rita Wilson (Monash University, Melbourne)