Dott. Lett. Pavia; MA Kent, DPhil Oxon – Professor in Italian and the Visual Arts at Royal Holloway University of London and Head of the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures. She is the Principal Investigator for the project Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: interart/intermedia. She has published widely on 19th and 20th century visual culture, cultural history and popular literature. Her research interests are firmly in the area of comparative and interdisciplinary studies, especially the intersection of the verbal and the visual, and the role of Italian visual culture in the construction of Italian identity both in Italy and abroad. Recent volumes include The Cult of the Duce. Mussolini and the Italians from 1914 to the Present (2013, with S. Gundle and C. Duggan), and Italian Crime Fiction (2011). You can see her discuss the work of contemporary Italian crime writers in the BBC Four documentary film Italian noir. In 2010 she co-curated the exhibition Against Mussolini. Art and the Fall of a Dictator (London, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art) as part of the AHRC funded research grant The Cult of the Duce (www.mussolinicult.com). She is on the editorial board of Italian Studies (Cultural Studies issue), general series editor of European Crime Fictions and Studies in Visual Culture (University of Wales Press, Cardiff) and is a member of the executive committee of the Society of Italian Studies. In 2014-15 she was the recipient of the HARC Fellowship with a project entitled Making Space for Art, sponsored by the Humanities and Arts Research Centre at Royal Holloway. Pieri’s contribution to Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: Interart/Intermedia focuses on Italian Modernism and the intersection between design (pre- and postwar) and Italian culture as part of the project’s collaboration with our partner, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.
