Francesca Passaseo

Francesca is a rising third-year PhD student in Italian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and holds a MRes in Modern Languages from the University of Reading (UK). Before starting her PhD, she worked for the British National Health Service for 6 years, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her current research is influenced by this experience, with work on biopolitical readings of remote and essential labour. She has also been working on conflicting pandemic narratives of care work and health workers between nationalism and socialism.

In her previous research, Francesca has mainly concentrated on cultural representations of sexual violence against women, in particular the monologue Lo stupro (The Rape) by Italian activist and playwright Franca Rame, performed in support of the sexual violence legislative reforms advocated by the 1970s Italian women’s movement. Francesca’s Masters thesis discussed the Italian extra-parliamentary New Left movement operaismo (workerism) of the 1960s, specifically the movement's literary criticism as a manoeuvre for power within the Italian intellectual field.