Current Research Areas
1. The Cultural Impact of Human Mobility
This is a research area in which ISO has been engaging since 2009. Throughout the years it has taken different strands which can be grouped under two headings:
Representations of Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative, was launched with a research workshop held in February 2009, Migrating Italy. This served to establish the ISO research group, formed of scholars from the U.K. universities of Oxford, Warwick, Bristol, London and Reading. Since then, we have worked to forge contacts with experts in the field abroad, and have succeeded in setting up a cohesive international network. We learnt in April 2010 that we were successful in our application for a Leverhulme Trust International Networks grant. This allowed us to organize three further workshops (in Italy, New York and Cairo), a major conference in Oxford in April 2012. The aim of the project is the study of how narrative representations can influence both the migratory dynamic at its origin, as well as perceptions of migrations in the destination country. Its principal achievement was the publication of the volume Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative, edited by Emma Bond, Guido Bonsaver and Federico Faloppa (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015).
As part of the Representations project, we have also been successful in our application for a John Fell Fund grant to allow us to set up a databank of Italian films which deal with the subject of migration. Once completed, the databank will be publicly available through ISO's website, and will provide an invaluable resource for those researching contemporary representations of migration in Italian cinema.
The second strand focuses on the Cultural Change and Migration, which was launched with an international conference held in May 2009, Italy as a Migration Crossroad with speakers from Italy, the U.S., France, Austria and the U.K., including Professor Enrico Pugliese, and Professor Donna Gabaccia. In recent years, sponsored by a John Fell Fund grant, the research work has been concentrating on the cultural and linguistic impact of contact and migration between Italy and the USA. Amongst recent offshoots see the following publications: Italy and the Usa: Understanding Cultural Change in Language and Narrative, edited by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019); 'From Sicily to Louisiana: Early Migration and Historiographical Issues', by Guido Bonsaver and Alice Gussoni, in L. Braun-Strumfels, M. Marinari and D. Fiorentino (eds.), Managing Migration in Italy and in the United States (Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter, 2023), pp. 171-189.
2. Foreign Language Learning in Italy and Britain: History and Perspectives
This a most recent research interest at ISO. It relates to the lack of quantitative data about two parallel phenomena taking place in opposite directions: the history of the organization and provision of English language teaching in Italian schools on the one hand, and on the other the history and provision of Italian language teaching in Great Britain. These data are important not just to sociolinguists but also to cultural historians interested in foreign language learning as a symptom of the presence and influence of cultural models.
In order to address this issue, ISO is planning two international workshops which will take place in early summer and in the autumn of 2024. The aim is to build the co-ordination and collaboration of experts in different countries - mainly Italy and Great Britain - in order to assess the state of current research on the topic and then move on to the establishment of a major research project involving ISO and other institutions in Britain and Italy.
For further details on ISO research projects, please contact: italianstudies@area.ox.ac.uk.