I am a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Dr Charlotte Ross. Within the Department of Italian Studies I am also a teaching assistant, e-leaning instructor and WebCT designer. Outside the University, I collaborate for the Association of the Study of Modern Italy – ASMI (www.asmi.org.uk) as their Development Officer.

Research project

My Doctoral project investigates the way sexual nonconformity has been portrayed on Italian mainstream television (Rai, Mediaset, La7 and MTV) in the last twenty years, mainly through fiction and infotainment. Contemporaneously, it looks at how these representations have been severely affected by socio-political changes, economical trends and the very way Italian audiences perceive sexual minorities. In particular, I explore the avenues in which both traditional and niche audiences read and are challenged by televisual texts in Italy. Methodologically, my project combines media discourse analysis, qualitative research and ethnography.

Background

I completed a three year degree in Lingue nella Società dell'Informazione at the Università di Roma "Tor Vergata", which merges the study of languages with media studies and Information Technology. In 2006, I gained an MA in Italian Studies: Culture and Communication, the joint programme at the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick, where my dissertation looked at representation and reception of Italian non-heteronormative identities on the Internet.

Teaching and research interests

• Media, audience and cultural studies
• LGBTQI studies and Queer theory
• Intra-media translation, dubbing and subtitling 
• Linguistics and semiotics
• Italian travel literature

Forthcoming publication

'Queerable Audience and Italian Televisibility: Towards Novel Avenues of Enquiry'  in Queer in Europe, edited by Downing L. and Gillett R. - Ashgate’s Queer Interventions series (Forthcoming).

Conference papers

‘Italian Queer Refractions: Representation and Reception during the last 20 years of National Television’ Birmingham-Warwick Postgraduate Forum - University of Warwick, UK, 22nd May 2008.

‘Queer Televisibility and the Audience: Towards Novel Tools of Enquiry in Italy’ Queer in Europe (International conference) - Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe (CISSGE), University of Exeter, UK, 13th-15th September 2008.

‘Queering Heteronormative Audience Studies’ Queer Screen Cultures - Postgraduate Study Day at the University of Nottingham, UK, 5th May 2009.

Multimedia projects

Presenter at the Graduate School Poster and Networking Conference, University of Birmingham, UK, 11th June 2008.

Email: Lxm487@bham.ac.uk