Research Team

Luca Barra is the principal investigator of the research project ATLas - Atlas of Local Televisions (PRIN 2020). Full professor at the Department of the Arts, University of Bologna, he teaches Television and Digital Media, Cultures of Television Production and Forms of Contemporary Television Series. He is coordinator of the Master’s degree in Information, Cultures and Media Organization (INCOM) and director of the summer school “Mediating Italy in Global Culture”. His main research interests in the field of media and television studies concern the cultures of television production and distribution, media industries, the international circulation of media content (and their national mediations), the history of Italian, European and US television, TV series, comedy and humor genres, and the evolutions of the contemporary media scenario. He is one of the local leaders of the project F-ACTOR - Forms of Contemporary Media Actorship (PRIN 2017) and participated in the project DETECt - Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives (Horizon 2020). His latest books are La programmazione televisiva. Palinsesto e on demand  (Laterza, Rome-Bari 2022) and La sitcom. Genere, evoluzione, prospettive  (Carocci, Rome 2020). He co-edited A European Television Fiction Renaissance. Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation (Routledge, Rome 2021). He is editorial consultant to Link. Idee per la televisione and co-directs the SuperTele series of volumes for minimum fax.

Riccardo Fassone is associate professor at the University of Torino, where he teaches Digital Media History and Video Game History and Theory. His research areas are the analysis of play within media, the relation between video games and other media, and popular film. He was research fellow at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester (NY), and visiting researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (GA). He is the author of two books, Every Game is an Island (Bloomsbury, 2017) e Cinema e videogiochi (Carocci, 2017), and several articles and chapters in Italian, English, French, and Portuguese. His next book, Fictional Games (with Stefano Gualeni, Bloomsbury, 2023), is an analysis of the role of play in popular narratives. He is among the founders of GAME - The Italian Journal of Game Studies and has acted as organizer and reviewer for conferences such as DiGRA, FDG, and ICIDS. He is part of the management committee of the European COST Action Grassroots of Digital Europe: from Historic to Contemporary Cultures of Creative Computing (GRADE), which analyses the history of digital creativity in Europe. He is also a game designer, with several published digital and analogue games, and numerous public speaking engagements on themes of game design and development.

Giulia Allegrini is associate professor at the Department of the Arts of Bologna University. Her main research interests concern participation and civic imagination processes, the practices of cultural participation, the role of culture and artistic practices in the production of social change and in the constitution of public spheres, the study of audiences and of participatory cultures, the practices of cultural production and cultural innovation. She also carries out research in the context of European projects, among the latest "Performing gender. Dancing in Your Shoes ” funded by the Creative Europe program. For several years she has designed and facilitated action-research processes in collaboration with public bodies and associations.  

Giulia Crisanti received her PhD in Modern History from Fordham University (New York) in May 2021. She is currently a research fellow at the University La Sapienza in Rome, where she works on the project ATLas - Atlante delle Televisioni Locali (PRIN 2020). Previously, from June 2021 to March 2023, she was a research fellow at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, within the project “Transatlantic Transfers: The Italian Presence in Postwar America” (PRIN 2017). Starting in 2022, she has worked as an adjunct lecturer in U.S. History at the University of Pisa. Her research interests include the history of Italy-U.S. relations and cultural exchanges, studies of business history, the analysis of the processes of Americanization and globalization with a focus on the United States and Europe, the use of audiovisual media as historical sources, media history, and food history, with particular attention to Italy and the United States. Her book, Europeans Are Lovin'it? Coca Cola, McDonald's and Responses to American Global Businesses in Italy and France, 1886-2015 (BRILL, 2023), received the Rob Kroes Publication Award from the European Association of American Studies (EAAS)

Giovanna Maina is associate professor at the University of Torino, where she teaches Film and Gender and History of Film Theory. She has worked on a Marie Curie IEF funded research project titled Degradation or Empowerment? Challenging Stereotypes About Women in Porn at the University of Sunderland (UK, 2013-2105). She is editor of the journal Schermi. Storie e culture del cinema e dei media in Italia and a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal Porn Studies. Her most recent books are Corpi che si sfogliano. Cinema, generi e sessualità su «Cinesex» (1969-1974) (ETS, 2018) and Play, men! Un panorama della stampa italiana per adulti (1966-1975) (Mimesis, 2019). Her main research interests are: gender representations in the media, Italian popular cinema, and contemporary alternative pornographies.

Myriam Mereu earned her PhD in Philological and Literary Studies at the University of Cagliari with a dissertation on language in the new Sardinian cinema. From February 2023 to March 2025, she was a research fellow for the Cagliari unit of the project ATLas – Atlante delle television locali (PRIN 2020). She also held a teaching position for the course Television Languages and New Media as part of the master’s degree in clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Cagliari, and she taught Theories and Analysis of Cinema and Audiovisual Media at IED Cagliari. Her research interests range from linguistic film studies to voice and orality studies, from the relationship between cinema and literature to the teaching of film studies at university level. She has developed a strong interest in documentary cinema and television seriality, with particular attention to the discursive and narrative practices of teen dramas. She published numerous essays and articles in academic journals, including L’Avventura, Between, Fata Morgana, and Schermi. Storie e culture del cinema e dei media in Italia; Imago. Studi di cinema e medi, and Quaderni del CSCI. In 2024, her first monograph was published by Mimesis: Le voci dello schermo. Le lingue nel cinema sardo contemporaneo. 

PhD in Cinema, Photography and Television at the Department of the Arts, University of Bologna, he is involved as a post-doc researcher in ATLas - Atlas of Local Television project. He teaches Organization and Management of Multimedia Systems (CdLM Incom e Citem), is responsible of Television and Web TV laboratory and class tutor of Media Management course at the University of Bologna. He also works as an adjunct professor in Radio-Tv Theories and Techniques at Università degli Studi di Padova and History and Techniques of Television and Digital Media at Università degli Studi di Udine. Since 2019 he has been part of the organizing committee of the Mediating Italy in Global Culture summer school. He collaborated with F-ACTOR - Forms of Contemporary Media Actorship (PRIN 2017). He took part in several national and international conferences, and his monography (Schermi di trasporto. Storia, produzione, immaginari) was published in 2023; his writings have appeared in volumes and journals, including Cinéma & Cie, Cinergie. Il cinema e le altre arti, Imago. Studi di cinema e media, La Valle dell’Eden. He currently serves as journal manager for VIEW Journal of European Television History & Culture.

Diego Cavallotti is associate professor at the University of Cagliari, where he teaches Media Education, Postcinema and Digital Storytelling, and Theory and Technique of Film Language. His research interests revolve around film historiography, amateur film and video, media and social movements, film and audiovisual archive theory, Italian cinema history, Italian television history, and media archaeology. He is author of several papers published in national and international journals, and of three books - Cultura video. Le riviste specializzate in Italia (1970-1995), Labili tracce. Per una teoria della pratica videoamatoriale and Transarchivi. Media radicali, archeologie, ecologie.

Damiano Garofalo is associate professor in Film & Television Studies at the Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Arts, Performing Art, Sapienza University of Rome, where he teaches Cinema History, Television History, and Television Serial Narratives. After receiving his PhD in Historical Studies from the University of Padua, he taught as an adjunct professor at the Universities of Padua, Udine, Milan (Cattolica), Cassino and Rome (Sapienza). From 2017 to 2019, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Catholic University of Milan, where he worked at CeRTA - Television and Audiovisual Research Center. In 2016 he was visiting lecturer at McGill University (Montreal) and in 2019 visiting scholar at Ohio State University (Columbus, OH). His main research topics include the history of Italian television from a social perspective, the cultural history of Italian cinema, the international distribution of Italian audiovisual media, and the relations between cinema, media and history with particular reference to the representation of the Holocaust in visual culture. On these issues, he has published several essays, articles and three monographs. Currently, he is part of the the editorial board of the journal Cinema e Storia. Rivista di studi interdisciplinari and editor-in-chief of Imago. Studi di cinema e media.

Luca Antoniazzi (PhD, Leeds) is a junior assistant professor at the Università di Scienze gastronomiche di Pollenzo. He previously served as a post-doc researcher at the Department of the Arts of the Università di Bologna, where he worked within the F-ACTOR - Forms of Contemporary Media Actorship (PRIN 2017) project, with a focus on acting and talent agencies in the television industry. He has previously worked on European audiovisual media circulation and, as doctoral researcher, on film archiving and cultural policy. He has published in nationally and internationally renowned journals such as Cinéma & Cie, Information, Communication and Society, International Journal of Cultural Policy and The Moving Image.

Luana Fedele is a PhD student in Music and Performing Arts at the Department of History Anthropology Religions Arts and Performing Arts of Sapienza University of Rome with a thesis entitled "Film Production and Distribution in Italy: the Cineriz Case (1956-1982)". Her research interests mainly concern the social and cultural history of Italian cinema, media industry studies and reception studies.

Matteo Marinello is a post-doc researcher at the Department of the Arts, University of Bologna, where he is a member of the research projects Circulating Populist Sentiments in 21st Century Film and TV Fiction in Italy (Prin 2022) and ATlas - Atlas of Local Televisions (Prin 2020). After graduating in history at the University of Padua (2020), he obtained his PhD in Visual, Performing and Media Arts at the University of Bologna (2023), with a research on the relationship between comedy and politics in Italian television in the 1970s. His studies therefore move between cultural, media and political history, with a focus on comedy, entertainment and television production. He is the author of several essays on these topics and a monograph titled Backstage all’Italiana. Television, comedy and the national imagination in ‘Boris’, the series (Infinito Edizioni, 2022). Since 2023 he teaches history and theory of television at the University of Bari and at the University of Padua.

Lidia Piccioni is associate professor of Contemporary History at the Department of “Storia Antropologia Religioni Arte Spettacolo (SARAS)”, Faculty of  Humanities  and Philosophy, University of Rome La Sapienza.  She got her PhD in "Rural and Urban History" at University of Perugia. Her main research and teaching fields are urban history and environmental transformation between 1800s and 1900s, contemporary history of Italy with special regard to the city of Rome, sources and methodology of historiographical research. On these issues she has published widely, both essays and books. She devised and currently supervises the editorial project Un laboratorio di storia urbana: le molte identità di Roma nel Novecento (2008 “Il Campidoglio” prize for culture), which so far has produced ten monographs on as many neighbourhoods of the city.

Paola Zeni holds a PhD in Philology, Literature and Performance Studies from the University of Verona. Since August 2022, she has been involved in the project F-ACTOR - Forms of Contemporary Media Actorship (PRIN 2017) as a post-doc researcher at the Department of Humanities of the University of Turin. Since May 2023, she has been involved in the project ATLas - Atlas of Local Televisions (PRIN 2020). Her doctoral research focused on acting and stardom in Italian cinema of the fascist era, which is also the topic of her first book L'amazzone bianca. Luisa Ferida attrice e diva nell’Italia fascista (Mimesis, 2022).