Clodagh Brook Professor in Italian

Position: Professor in Italian, Fellow of Trinity College.

Office: 4040

Email: brookc@tcd.ie

Clodagh Brook is a Professor in Italian. She was educated at Oxford University (D Phil) and at University College, Dublin (BA and MA). She was Reader at The University of Birmingham (Russell Group) before taking up her position at Trinity College in 2017. Professor Brook was awarded Fellowship of Trinity College in 2022.

Research: Her research has two main strands:

The first strand explores identity and political voice. It assesses how minority or suppressed voices emerge in the public sphere, looking especially at the place of institutional and symbolic structures in supporting or blocking this emergence. Her third monograph, Screening Religions in Italy: Contemporary Italian Cinema and Television in the Public Sphere (University of Toronto Press, 2019) assesses how religions, including Islamic minorities, access the public sphere in Italy. Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (Continuum, 2009) explores oppositional practices in the media, arts and in protest movements (including gender and LGBTQ) when Italy’s media was dominated by a single politician: Silvio Berlusconi.

The second strand teases out questions of interconnectedness, intermediality and interdisciplinarity. Professor Brook led a large Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded grant, Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: Interart/Intermedia (www.interdisciplinaryitaly.org), which continues to produce monographs, articles, a special issue, pedagogical materials and an exhibition. Through it, she has collaborated with galleries (Estorick Collection, London), artists and school teachers, as well as working with scholars from a range of disciplines. As part of this strand, she has a co-edited book on Transmedia (2014), a special issue on Intermedia in Italian Studies (2019), a co-written monograph (Intermedia in Italy: From Futurism to Digital Convergence), and several articles. She has co-organised the annual Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School at Trinity since 2018. In 2022 she co-organised the 6th International Conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies at Trinity.

In addition, she has published widely on Italian poetry and cinema, including a monograph on early-twentieth-century poet, Eugenio Montale, for Oxford University Press (2002), and a monograph on a key Italian political filmmaker, Marco Bellocchio: The Cinematic I in the Political Sphere (2010).

She has organized workshops and given keynote addresses in the USA, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and the UK, and now serves on several editorial boards (including FMLS, Italica, and JICMS)

Postdoctoral and Doctoral Researchers
Professor Brook warmly welcomes expressions of interest on themes and ideas relevant or connected to her research. Simply email brookc@tcd.ie

Teaching: She lectures on cinema, twentieth and twenty-first century literature and Italian history and culture.
She is very interested in teaching methodologies and policies. She has published on, and organized conference panels about, interdisciplinary policies and practices. She has a strong interest in inclusive teaching methodologies:  in 2020 she set up Trinity’s Inclusive Curriculum programme (Trinity INC), and completed its microcredential in 2022.
She was Director of the cross-college Cultural Inquiry MA (University of Birmingham, 2003-2013). She was on the steering committee for Trinity’s SLLCS MA in Identities, and now teaches on the programme. 

Leadership:  She served as Trinity’s first Associate Vice Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (2019-21). She was Head of Modern Languages (University of Birmingham, 2012-15) and Head of Italian (2008-11; 2016-17; 2019-22) . She also sat on the Executive Committee of the UK and Ireland Society for Italian Studies (research portfolio holder). She has held positions as Co-Director, and founding member, of B-Film (The Centre for Film at the University of Birmingham) as well as being a member of the University of Birmingham Curriculum Review Group. She was also a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College (2012-17).

Books

Edited books

Selected recent articles and chapters

External research funding  

Research Profile