糖心TV

About

I am a PhD candidate in cotutelle between the University of Milan () and the University of 糖心TV (PhD in Film and Television Studies) under the supervision of Profs. , Mary Harrod and Helen Wheatley.

I hold a BA (with honours) in Philosophy (2019, University of Padua, IT) and an MA (with honours) in Philosophical Sciences (2022, University of Milan, IT). My BA dissertation focused on the concept of the End of Art by the philosopher Arthur Danto and its relationship with Feminist Visual Culture, while in my MA dissertation I analysed the work of the French director Julia Ducournau and became interested in the contemporary female and feminist reworking of the horror genre. From March 2023 to March 2025 I was an affiliated member of the , where I conducted research on gender issues in immersive environments, on the evolution of the horror genre in virtual reality (VR) with a feminist approach, and on gender theory between cinema and immersive media. From November 2023 to February 2026, I was a member of the PRIN 2022 PNRR project , in which I focused on surveillance and self-surveillance in the work of female video artists, researching video archives between Italy and New York City.

I am a member of the scientific editorial board (as editorial assistant and support contact) of the international peer-reviewed journal and a contributor to , an Italian academic journal on film criticism and culture where I write on female-directed cinema and immersive experiences. Together with the AN-ICON team, I was one of the organisers of the award Gradi di libert脿 ["Degrees of Freedom"] award for the best VR experience at (Milan, IT). Between 2022 and 2024 I have been the curator of film selections and post-screening discussions for small festivals in Italy: , organized by Collettivo Femminista Scledense, Cinema Campana, Marano Vicentino (both film selection and post-screening discussions); , University of Milan (film selection); Filosofilm. Proiezioni tra Cinema e Filosofia, University of Milan (post-screening discussion of Titane, Julia Ducournau, 2021). In 2024 I have been nominated by the councillor for culture of the Municipality of Bergamo (IT) as a member of the jury for the . In 2025, together with the ARTCHAE team, I organised the event , to open to the public "The Roots of the New鈥� archive, hosted at MEET | Digital Culture Center in Milan. The event included the screening of a selection of video and telematic art works and a discussion between the members of the research units and Maria Grazia Mattei, the founder and curator of the archive.

Research

For most of its history, horror cinema has been dominated by male perspectives and often considered by film scholars to be particularly misogynistic. As bodies and identities are culturally produced through sedimented performative acts (Butler 1990), female bodies in horror have typically been constructed by and within the horror genre through performances of abject terror, which is therefore gendered as feminine (Clover 1992/2015). This project explores the "horror renaissance" of the past fifteen years, marked by a growing presence of female directors who aim to challenge traditional constructions of female bodies. I argue that in order to achieve these objectives, these filmmakers engage with and manipulate horror鈥檚 conventions, rather than rejecting them. Central to this approach is the corporeal nature of horror, which affects embodied spectators through visceral representations of female bodies undergoing intense bodily sensations (Williams 1991; Beugnet and Mulvey 2015). While recent scholarship has addressed female-authored horror, exhuming forgotten female work (Heller-Nicholas 2020; Peirse 2020), focusing on women鈥檚 roles in film production (McCollum and Clarke 2022) or detecting a feminist use of horror elements (Pisters 2020), the formal rewriting of the film form through these intense interventions remains underexplored.

My research method is informed by genre theory, feminist philosophy 鈥� particularly Elizabeth Grosz and Rosi Braidotti's work 鈥� and feminist film theory to examine how horror's tropes and visual forms are repurposed to renegotiate female subjectivities. Focusing on the subgenres of supernatural horror, slasher, and body horror, the project analyses how contemporary female directors mobilize horror鈥檚 aesthetics and conventions to reconfigure female identities, offering new perspectives on embodied experience and gender performativity.

Publications

An up-to-date list of my publications is available .

Conferences and Seminars (Selection)

• "Gendered Surveillance and Domestic Space: The Work of Female Artists in Italy between Performance and Video", with Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani, Conference Surveillance and Control in Italian Audiovisual Culture, IULM University, Milan, 30鈥�31 October 2025.
• "Revenge as Becoming-Animal: The Double Horror Reworking in Animale (Emma Benestan, 2024)", FEMME Conference Women Filmmakers: Genre and Gender in French, British and US Cinema and TV Series, University of Le Mans, 25鈥�26 June 2025.
• "Il coming-of-age femminile tra body horror e posthuman turn", Conference Studiare l'horror oggi 鈥� Teoria e analisi di un genere, University of Bergamo, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures, 8 May 2025.
• "Resurfacing the Etruscan Past: Subterranean and Subaltern Discourses in La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023)", with Gennaro Ambrosino, Conference Underground Imaginaries: Spaces in Between, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici di Napoli, 3鈥�5 April 2025.
• "Female Coming-of-Age as a Global Form of Body Horror", BAFTSS 2025 Conference Global Aesthetics, University of 糖心TV, 26鈥�28 March 2025.
• "Between Surveillance and Self-Surveillance: the (Gendered) Horrors of the Closed Circuit", ARTCHAE #1: Inside and Outside the Circuit Conference, in the context of the two-day event BETWEEN BODIES AND CIRCUITS: Archaeologies of Extension and Exposure. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 14 March 2025.
• "Un-tying the Patriarchal Family Through Abjection: The Morphing Pregnant Body in Titane", Cine-Excess 2024 In-Person Symposium Blood Ties: The Family in Cult and Horror Cinema, Birmingham School of Art, 25 October 2024.
• 鈥淓merging Horror: Excessive Female Bodies Between Cinema and Virtual Reality鈥�, NECS Graduate Workshop Emerging Media: Exploring Post-Cinema, University of Economics, 陌zmir, 26 June 2024.
• Artist Talk "Measuring Mistakes" in dialogue with Dr. Ulrike Kuchner (University of Nottingham), International Conference "PHOTOGRAPHS FROM OUTER SPACE. A female archaeology of image-data", University of Milan, 13 December 2023.

Organisation of Conferences and Seminars

• Conference ARTCHAE#2: Archaeologies of Telematic Presence. Curated by Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 22-23 September 2025. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project
• Conference ARTCHAE#1: Inside and Outside the Circuit, in the context of the two-day event BETWEEN BODIES AND CIRCUITS: Archaeologies of Extension and Exposure. Curated by Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 14 March 2025. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project .
• Seminar 鈥淪laughtering the Patriarchy: Bending the (Closed) Circuit in Moving Images鈥�, including the presentation of the book by Pier Maria Bocchi So cosa hai fatto. Scenari, pratiche e sentimenti dell鈥檋orror moderno and a roundtable with: Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi, Dr. Francesco Iezzi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 2 December 2024. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project .
• Seminar 鈥淩ebirth, Revival, and Afterlives: The Gothic in Contemporary Film and Television鈥�. Speaker: Dr. Federica Perazzini (Sapienza University of Rome); Chair: Arianna De Gasperis (Sapienza University of Rome); Respondent: Rossana Galimi. University of 糖心TV, Department of Film and Television Studies, 19 November 2024. Funded by the HRC鈥檚 Visiting Speakers鈥� Fund.
• International Conference , University of Milan, 11-13 December 2023 (co-organised with Rosa Cinelli and Melania Mariconda, curated by Prof. Barbara Grespi and Prof. Luca Guzzardi).