Università di Bologna

ROY MENARINI is Full Professor in Cinema and Cultural Industry at the University of Bologna; he is senior editor of the academic journal "Cinergie", he directs the series of the same name for the publisher Mimesis, he coordinates the international research group CFC (Culture. Fashion, Communication), he is Principal Investigator of the PRIN PNRR 2022 "Celebr-age". He has also written numerous volumes and essays on contemporary cinema and studied the forms of film culture, including - recently - Il discorso e lo sguardo (Diabasis, 2018), La grande illusione (Mimesis, 2021), Hitchcock. La donna che visse due volte (Carocci, 2023). He is consultant for the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, artistic director of the La Settima Arte festival in Rimini, and curator of numerous education projects (Saper guardare un film, with AGIS, FICE and the Department of the Arts) and screen education work packages for schools.

ANTONELLA MASCIO is Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communication Processes at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Fashion and Digital Media and Media and Cultural Processes. She was a visiting scholar at Waseda University, Tokyo, and the University of California, San Diego. Her main research interest is the relationship between TV series and audiences, using a sociological and media perspective, which includes fandom research, fashion and celebrity culture, and nostalgia studies.  Her research is published in books of which she is author and editor (2008, Virtuali Comunità; 2008, Visioni di moda; 2012, Fashion Games; 2018, The Size Effect, with R. Menarini, S. Segre Reinach, I. Tolic). She has published many articles in scientific journals and books. In the last years: (2022) “Media Convergence, Fashion and TV Series”, in The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies, Routledge; with A. Manzato, (2019), “The Young Pope: An Italian ‘celevision’ case study”, in Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, Intellect. She is in numerous editorial boards, including Pop Junctions (Henry Jenkins project). She is co-founder of INC, the Italian Research Network on Celebrity Culture, an association of scholars who approach the topic of celebrity from an interdisciplinary point of view. Most recently, in the field of Celebrity Studies and in the framework of INC Pesce has directed and organized (with R. Menarini and S. Pesce) a series of international conferences: Celebrity and Crisis, Celebrity in Crisis (Bologna 2021), Celebrity and Ageing (also with A. Scandola) (Bologna 2019), Celebrità e Industrie Culturali (also with S. Casoli) (Bologna 2016), Media Mutations “Serialità e celebrity” (Rimini 2016), Celebrities. Fashion, branding, performance nell’era dei social media (Bologna 2015). On this topic she also presented a paper: 1992 / 1993. A Story of Political Celebrity Degradation through a Fiction Framework (Rome 2018).

SARA PESCE is Associate Professor of the University of Bologna. Her research is published in journals and edited collections: on acting, performance, celebrity culture and fashion, on the historical roots of Hollywood industry, on memory and digital culture in the contemporary global context. She is curator of a series of public interviews to major Italian actors. She is co-founder of the Italian Research Network on Celebrity Culture. She is the author of books: on Hollywood Jewish founders (2005. Dietro lo schermo); on World War II and Italian Cinema (2008. Memoria e immaginario); on Laurence Olivier (2012 Laurence Olivier nei film). She is editor and author of two books: on film melodrama (2007. Imitazioni della vita,); and on time, memory and paratextual media: (2015, The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media. Routledge)