Manuela Di Franco is MSCA postdoctoral fellow at Ghent University. Her research project, From Dale Arden to Valentina. Americanisation and gender representation in Italian comics, 1934–1965, is supervised by Prof. Maaheen Ahmed and explores the development of modern Italian comics in a transcultural perspective.
She obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge with a thesis on the development of illustrated popular press in Fascist Italy, currently in publication as part of the IMLR book series with the title Going to the People: Popular Press in Fascist Italy, 1934–43.
Her research interests include Italian popular culture in Fascist Italy, gender representation in the popular press, and translation practices and censorship of comics in Italy. She was postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, where she founded the TICS–Toronto Italian Comics Studies group, recipient of the Goggio research group award in 2022.