People
Project researchers
Derek Duncan
Derek Duncan is Professor of Italian Cultural Studies at the University of St Andrews. His has published extensively on modern Italian literature and film, particularly in relation to cultures of migration. He was founding editor of the ‘Cultural Studies’ issue of Italian Studies and of Liverpool University Press’s acclaimed series ‘Transnational Italian Cultures.’ He is also co-editor of Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook (LUP: 2022), the core text of ‘Transnational Modern Languages’ a series of books for undergraduates that takes them beyond the familiar boundaries of the subject. He is currently working on an essay about the architect Jack Coia for Global Landscapes of Italian Diaspora: Italy Is Made, the book he is co-editing with Professor Michele Monserrati (Smith College).
Eleanor Summers
Eleanor Summers is a Research Assistant on Incontri, a project that brings together diverse narratives of Italian life in Scotland. Her work focuses on uncovering and sharing stories that have often been overlooked, placing them alongside more familiar histories, and exploring how these experiences continue to shape communities today.
Her research for Incontri combines extensive archival work – ranging from census records, historical documents and newspaper archives to photographs and material culture – with fieldwork and community engagement. She has been involved in oral-history interviews, workshops, and the curation of public-facing outputs including exhibitions, podcasts and digital content. Through this process, she is particularly interested in how personal stories intersect with broader social, cultural and environmental histories of migration.
Eleanor holds a First-Class MA (Hons) in Social Anthropology and Italian from the University of St Andrews and is currently completing postgraduate studies in Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. Her interdisciplinary background, combined with experience living and working in Italy and Scotland, informs her approach to researching historical and contemporary migration.
Project interns
Maddy Fryling
Madeleine Fryling is a Research Intern with Incontri, currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. She assists in the organization of pop up exhibitions as well as maintaining the social media presence of this project online. Her research has centered on prominent Italian Scottish filmmaker, Enrico Cocozza, exploring his place in the Scottish film canon, and bringing attention to his work with the hope of contributing to this project’s goal of expanding the narrative around the diverse Scottish Italian experience.
Manuela Nicolussi
Manuela Nicolussi is a Research Intern with Incontri, where she contributes to both the organisation of pop-up exhibitions and the management of the project’s Instagram presence. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Modern Languages (French and Italian) and International Relations at the University of St Andrews, combining her academic interests in language, culture, and global affairs. Her research focuses on the historical and contemporary presence of Italian communities in Dumfries and Galloway, as well as the Italian presence in the Scottish education sector. Through her work, she explores themes of identity and cultural exchange, illustrating the often-overlooked contributions of Italian families to the region’s social landscape.
Research associates
Norma Alari
Norma Alari is a second generation Scots-Italian who on retiring from the NHS began researching her Italian heritage. This journey explored the lives of Italian families who had lived and worked in Dunfermline and surrounding area culminating in a book Italians of West Fife (2021). Her current project is to capture stories and images of Italian ice cream and fish and chip shops of Scotland.
Cecilia Brioni
Cecilia Brioni is a Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Aberdeen. Her work explores how ideas of Italian identity have been shaped by, and expressed in, popular culture, with a particular interest in questions of gender, generations, and transnational influences in the 20th and 21st centuries. She studies a wide range of media, including film, television, magazines, popular music, and social media. Her monograph Fashioning Italian youth: young people’s style and identity in Italian popular media, 1958-75 (Manchester University Press, 2023) won the 2023 AAIS Book Prize for First Book.
Remigio Petrocelli
Remigio Petrocelli was awarded a PhD in History in 2023 from the University of Dundee with a project focusing on Italian Fascism in interwar Scotland. He has published the monograph Importing Fascism: The Italian Community’s Fascist Experience in Interwar Scotland (Routledge, 2025), as well as several articles on Fascism, Italian-Scottish migration, and contemporary British-Italian history in prestigious Italian and British journals.
Anne Pia
Dr. Anne Pia is a retired HM Inspector of Education and is now a poet and writer. She writes in English, French, Laziale Italian and Scots. Her publications include Language of My Choosing (Luath Press;2017), Keeping Away The Spiders; Essays on Breaching Barriers (Luath Press;2021); Magnaccioni My Food My Italy (Luath Press; 2023); and two poetry collections, Transitory (Luath Press; 2018), andThe Sweetness of Demons (Vagabond Voices; 2021). She has been a judge for the Saltire Scottish National Book Awards and she read at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2025.
Anne is also a member of The Guild of Food Writers and regularly contributes to Bite Food magazine.