معرفی
Professor Francesca Billiani holds the Chair in Italian Studies at the University of Manchester, specializing in Fascist cultural politics, Italian modernism, and transnational print cultures. An AHRC Leadership Fellow (2016) and Marie Curie Fellow (2014), her research examines intersections of aesthetics, politics, and intellectual history across four domains: Fascist-era cultural production; late 19th-century Gothic/fantastic literature; journal/publishing networks; and public art.
Major projects include The Dialectics of Modernity: Modernism, Modernization, and the Arts under European Dictatorships (AHRC-funded, 2016-2018) resulting in the open-access monograph Architecture and the Novel under the Italian Fascist Regime (2019). Current research explores Italian muralism through Geographies and Histories of Murals in 20th Century Italy and global anti-fascist periodical networks.
Her publication record demonstrates consistent methodological innovation: recent work applies network analysis to interwar literary geography (2023) and examines fascist legacies in contemporary street art (2023). Earlier scholarship established foundations in censorship studies and transnational publishing histories, particularly Culture nazionali e narrazioni straniere (2007) on translation politics under fascism.
Professor Billiani mentors doctoral researchers in Italian cultural history and has supervised eight PhD projects. She teaches Fascist Cultural Policies, Cultural Theory, and Visual Culture at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
