Associate Professor - Department of Political and Social Sciences, Università di Bologna
ANTONELLA MASCIO is an Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Fashion, Celebrity and Digital Media and Media and Cultural Processes. She has been a visiting scholar at Waseda University in Tokyo and the University of California, San Diego.
In recent years, her research has focused particularly on the relationship between television series and audiences, adopting a sociological and media perspective that includes fandom studies, fashion and celebrity culture, and nostalgia studies. Her research has been published in books as both author and editor (Virtuali Comunità, 2008; Visioni di moda, 2008; Fashion Games, 2012; The Size Effect, 2018, with R. Menarini, S. Segre Reinach, and I. Tolic; Serie di Moda, 2023) as well as in academic journals.
Recent publications include:
She serves on the editorial board of Pop Junctions (a Henry Jenkins project) and Polis (Il Mulino). She is also a co-founder of INC (Italian Research Network on Celebrity Culture), an interdisciplinary network of scholars exploring celebrity studies.
Full Professor - Department of the Arts, Università di Bologna
ROY MENARINI is a Full Professor of Cinema and Cultural Industry at the University of Bologna. He is a senior editor of the academic journal Cinergie and directs the book series of the same name for Mimesis publisher. He coordinates the international research group CFC (Culture, Fashion, Communication) and serves as the Principal Investigator of the PRIN PNRR 2022 project Celebr-age.
Moreover, he has authored numerous books and essays on contemporary cinema and film culture, including – most recently – Il discorso e lo sguardo (Diabasis, 2018), La grande illusione (Mimesis, 2021), and Hitchcock. La donna che visse due volte (Carocci, 2023).
He is also a consultant for the Cineteca di Bologna, the artistic director of the La Settima Arte festival in Rimini, and the curator of various audience education projects (Saper guardare un film, in collaboration with AGIS, FICE, and the Department of the Arts) as well as screen education programs for schools (through CiPS funding and beyond).
Associate Professor - Department of the Arts, Università di Bologna
SARA PESCE is an Associate Professor in the Department of the Arts at the University of Bologna. Her research focuses on performance and acting in the Anglo-American context, celebrity, fashion and cinema, the historical roots of the Hollywood industry, and cultural and digital memory in the contemporary global landscape. Since 2012, she has curated a series of public interviews with contemporary Italian actors and actresses. She is also a co-founder of the Italian Research Network on Celebrity Culture.
On the topic of cultural memory in film and media studies, she has authored Dietro lo schermo. Gli immigrati ebrei che hanno inventato Hollywood (2005) and Memoria e immaginario. La seconda guerra mondiale nel cinema italiano (2008), and co-edited The Politics of Ephemeral Digital Media: Permanence and Obsolescence in Paratexts (2016) with Paolo Noto. In 2007, she curated and contributed to Imitazioni della vita. Il melodramma cinematografico. Her monograph Laurence Olivier nei film. Shakespeare, la star, il carattere was published in 2012.