Manuela Di Franco obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Before joining UGent as a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow in 2023, she was lecturer of Italian language and culture at the University of Michigan (2022–2023) and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto (2021–2022). Her research interests are the Americanisation of Italian popular culture and society in the 20th century, the development of popular media in Fascist Italy, Fascist censorship, Italian modern comics and gender representation. Given her interest in the multicultural dialogue between Italy and the US, her work has also covered early practices of translation. While her main research focus is the 20th century, she is also working on 21st century comics and representation of gender and gender violence. Her current research includes analyses of feminist content in Italian comics and comics zines (1970s to 1990s) and the development of a model to quantify the male gaze in comics. Her first monograph, Going to the People. Popular Press in Fascist Italy, 1934–43 was published in the IMLR book series in May 2026.
