Elisa Vivaldi (AFHEA)

Biography

Background

I am a current PhD candidate and tutor in Italian at the University of Edinburgh, working in co-supervision (Joint Degree/cotutelle) with KU Leuven, Cultural Studies Research Unit, under the supervision of prof. Federica Pedriali (UoE) and prof. Sascha Bru (KUL), within the context of the Una-Her-Doc programme in Cultural Heritage promoted by Una Europa.

My research examines how cultural heritage is used to shape, legitimise and contest ideas of national and political identity during periods of social and political crisis. Using twentieth-century Italian avant-garde movements as a case study, I explore how artists and writers reinterpreted the cultural past to respond to contemporary challenges and articulate competing visions of society and the future. The project focuses primarily on Italian Futurism, investigating how it challenged established understandings of heritage while simultaneously creating new cultural narratives of its own. It also considers how later movements in the 1960s and 1970s revisited and reinterpreted Futurism, treating it as a complex and often contested form of cultural heritage. More broadly, the research argues that heritage is not simply inherited from the past but is continually redefined in the present to address contemporary concerns. Through the lens of the avant-garde, the project explores the relationship between heritage, politics and identity, and the role cultural production plays in shaping collective understandings of both the past and the future.

I graduated from both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pisa, where I specialized in Contemporary Italian Literature and served as assistant examiner (culture della materia) for the same subject. 

Qualifications

  • 2026 I received accreditation as Associate Fellow of Higher Education issued by Advance HE under the Professional Standards Framework (PSF) in recognition to my teaching practice
  • 09/2022 – current    University of Edinburgh, School of Languages Literatures and Cultures (UK) [Joint Agreement/cotutelle] Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Arts (Belgium) Ph.D. Candidate, Italian/Literary Studies (Letterkunde)  First Supervisor: prof. Federica G. Pedriali (UoE) Second Supervisor: prof. Sascha Bru (KU Leuven)    
  • 10/2019 – 12/2021  University of Pisa  Master’s degree in Italian studies, LM-14 (Modern Philology) Final grade: 110/110 cum laude. 
  • 09/2016 – 10/2019  University of Pisa   Bachelor’s degree in Literature, L-10 (Humanities) Final Grade: 110/110 cum laude. 

Responsibilities & affiliations

I served for three years as PGR representative for the Society for Italian Studies (SIS).

Una-Her-Doc Programme in Cultural Heritage, Transnational Research Team 'Cultural Heritage in the context of Migrations and Global Mobilities'; 

MDRN Research Lab at KU Leuven 

Conference details

  • ‘Reframing the Past: Cultural Heritage, Migration and the Avant-Garde’s Critical Afterlives.’ Presented at the 10th International Conference of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, Avant-Garde and Migration, Stockholm University, 3 September 2026.
  • ‘Italian Futurismo and the Politics of Heritage.’ Presented at the Society for Italian Studies Biennial Conference, TCD/UCD, Dublin, 9 July 2026.
  • ‘Erinyes, Amazons, Cleopatras: Rhetoric of Femininity and Conflict in Italian Futurism.’ Presented as part of the panel Futurism and War at the 9th Conference of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, Jagiellonian University, 17–19 September 2024.
  • ‘Concrete, Visual, Electro-Phonic: Ekphrastic Experimentations and the Legacies of Futurismo.’ Presented as part of the panel Ekphrasis as Transmedia: Creating Mimesis from Antiquity to the Digital Age at the Society for Italian Studies Biennial Conference, Royal Holloway, University of London, 21 June 2024.
  • ‘La caffeina d’Europa’: The Scandal of Futurismo in the European Context. Presented at Art Without Borders: The Avant-Garde Networks of the Twentieth Century, Graduate Conference, University of Leeds–University of York, 20 June 2024.
  • ‘Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna!’ Crisis, Critique and Aesthetic Practices from Futurismo to the Neoavanguardia. Presented at Mutamenti: Overcoming Crises, Graduate Symposium, Johns Hopkins University–Yale University, 30 October 2023.
  • ‘For Europe: Cult and Liturgy of European Identity from Eliot to Esposito.’ Presented as part of the PhD Work in Progress Panel of the DELC Research Seminar Series, University of Edinburgh, 24 March 2022.

Invited speaker

  • Avant-Garde Aesthetics as Dissonant Heritage: Futurismo, Identity and Mobility in 20th-Century Italy, presented as part of Una Eropa’s Cultural Heritage Transnational Research Team 1 get together Cultural Heritage in the context of Migrations and Global Mobilities (May 19th 2025, online) 

  • ‘I will burn my book (or will I?). Crisis, Critique, and Heritage from Futurismo to Neoavanguardia’, presented as part of the MDRN get together (November 20th, 2024, KU Leuven) 

  • ‘Una propria immagine dell’universo reale’. Elsa Morante e le forme della prosa da Katherine Mansfield a Virginia Woolf. Invited guest speaker for the course Contemporary Italian Literature. April 14th, 2022, Scuola Superiore per Mediatori Linguistici Pisa. 

  • Crisis as an Art of Government: ‘Decolonising Minds and Methods | Research Seminars Series Launcher (2021-2022 Online Series).’ Invited to present at the DELC Research Seminar Series 2021-2022. November 18, 2021, University of Edinburgh  

Organiser

I co-organized three editions of SIS (The Society for Italian Studies) Post-Graduate Colloquium:

  • "Futurismo's Battlefields: War as Cultural Heritage in the Historical Avant-Garde", in At War: The Avant-Garde and Modernism in Times of Conflict, De Gruyter (forthcoming, November 2026).

  • “Ekphrastic Experimentations: Futurismo, Neoavanguardia and the treatment of Cultural Heritage” in Ekphrasis in Italian Culture from 15th-Century Humanism to the Digital Age, Franco Cesati Editore, 2025.  

  • “‘Specchiati nella mia faccia, non siamo forse uguali?’ Desiderio mimetico e forme della mediazione in Menzogna e sortilegio di Elsa Morante.” Annali d’Italianistica vol. 42 (2024).  

  • Book Review – Dario Gentili, The Age of Precarity. Endless Crisis as an Art of Government. London – New York: Verso, 2021. Pp. 136. Annali d'Italianistica vol. 40 (2022).  

  • Book Review – Tiziano Toracca, Il Romanzo neomodernista italiano. Dalla fine del neorealismo alla seconda metà degli anni Settanta. Palermo: Palumbo, 2022. Pp. 446. Italianistica. Rivista di letteratura italiana, 1, 2024.  

  • Book Review – Tommaso Ghezzani, Il platonico innamorato: Poesia, Amore, Magia in Francesco Patrizi da Cherso. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2023. Pp. xxxviii + 262. Annali d’Italianistica vol. 42 (2024).  

2026 Ediburgh University Student Association Teaching Awards - Nominee

2022-2024: School of Languages Literatures Cultures (LLC) Student Experience Grant  Awarded a total of £1,475 to organise the Work in Progress Seminar Series, an interdepartmental doctoral seminar facilitating the presentation of PhD research to peers to promote interdisciplinary outreach.  

2022/2023 – 2024/2025: College Research Award  Full tuition coverage and an annual stipend.  

09/2020 – 12/2020: Erasmus+ Grant  1st in merit within the Department of Philology, Literature, and Linguistics, Pisa. 

23/07/2018 – 10/08/2018: King’s College London Summer School  Fully funded award covering fees and maintenance to attend KCL Summer School, granted based on merit after a competitive selection process. 

2016/17 – 2020/21: University of Pisa Merit-Based Tuition Waiver  In Italy, public university tuition is based on income and merit. Throughout my bachelor’s and master’s degree I consistently ranked in the top 10% of my course for each year of my enrolment, earning a merit-based tuition waiver each year. 

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