Dr Cecilia Brioni

Biography

I hold a BA in Modern History (Università di Bologna, 2008), a Master's Degree in Modern History and Society (Università di Pisa and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 2011), and a PhD in Italian (University of Hull, 2017). I previously was a Teaching Fellow in Italian at the University of Hull (2018-19), a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Bristol (2019-20), and an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-22) and a Teaching Fellow in Italian (2022-23) at Trinity College Dublin. I joined the History Department at Aberdeen in August 2023.

External Memberships

Lead convenor of the Modern Italian History Seminar Series - Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Studies

Visiting Researcher at Trinity College Dublin - Italian Department

Fellowships

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Fellow of the HEA (FHEA)

Membership of Learned Societies

• American Association for Italian Studies
• Association for the Study of Modern Italy
• Society for Italian Studies

Networks

• Italian Girlhood Studies Research Network

Prizes and Awards

2023 American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize for First Book - Fashioning Italian youth. Young people's identity and style in Italian popular culture, 1958-75 (Manchester University Press, 2023).

Research Overview

My research interests focus on representations of bodies, style, age and ageing and gender in 20th- and 21st-century Italian popular culture, with a particular attention to the social and cultural construction of youth in a variety of cultural artefacts, including film, television, magazines, novels, and social media content. My monograph Fashioning Italian Youth: Young People's Identity and Style in Italian Popular Media, 1958-1975 (Manchester University Press, 2023) examines discourses around Italian young people's style and the body in youth-oriented popular culture from 1958 to 1975. My publications have examined the emergence of youth stardom in 1960s Italian television, representations of young masculinities and the trend of long hair in 1960s film and print media, Blackness and stardom in Italian culture from the 1960s to the present day, the Musicarello (an Italian musical, youth-oriented film genre), and the relationship between subcultural youth and urban spaces in 1990s novels set in Bologna.

Beyond the history of Italian youth cultures, I have also have also investigated whether social media have allowed for a diversification of representations of contemporary youth in the Italian context, by looking at self-representations of Italian youth on YouTube. On the topic of social media and digital identities, I have published contributions on representations of ageing stars in digital journalism, and representations of social media in recent youth-oriented TV series.

My current research explores the transnational circulation of European popular youth cultures in the 1990s, by focusing particularly on the cultural connections between Italy and Ireland in this decade.

Teaching Responsibilities

Research-led courses:

• HI306G History of the Body
• HI401J Youth Cultures, 1920s-2020s: Normativity and Subversions

Contribution in team-taught courses:

• HI1022 Europe in the Twentieth Century
• HI1027 Making History
• HI2020 The Birth of Modernity: Politics, Culture and Science in Europe, 1700-1870
• HI2027 'The Other': Histories of Minorities & The Marginalised
• HI356J Thinking History
• HI503R 'Global Energies': Transnational Approaches to Modern History

Course coordination:

• HI304J/354J Historical Research for Visiting Students 
• HI4518 History in Practice

Non-course Teaching Responsibilities

Departmental School Liaison Coordinator

Departmental GoAbroad Coordinator