Originating as an extension of “Periodici illustrati: metodi di analisi a confronto”, created as a research group at the University of Urbino in 2025, the group expanded with new collaborators and initiatives.
Research Group Coordinators
Università degli Studi di Urbino
Carlotta Castellani is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at the Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo. She earned her PhD in Art History, Literature and Cultural Studies from a joint program between the University of Florence and Paris IV Sorbonne (Doctor Europaeus, 2016), with a dissertation on Balzac and the illustrated magazine L’Artiste as a laboratory of modernity (“Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu” alle radici della Modernità, Peter Lang, 2023).
Her research focuses on the interwar period from a transnational and transdisciplinary perspective, with a strong emphasis on periodicals and Periodical Studies as a methodological framework. She has organized numerous panels, workshops, and conferences in New York, Florence, Budapest, and Urbino, and has published extensively on German International Constructivism, the Hungarian MA circle, El Lissitzky, Enrico Prampolini, and Italian illustrated magazines.
Her work highlights how periodicals functioned as key platforms for the circulation of artistic and intellectual ideas. From 2019 to 2021, she was Adjunct Professor at the University of Florence. Since 2021, she has been an Associate Scholar at 4A Laboratory (Max Planck Institute, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Humboldt University, and Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin).
She is a member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal RLMC and has been Chair of ESPRit since 2025.
Contact: carlotta.castellani@uniurb.it
Leeds Beckett University
Mary Ikoniadou is a scholar of Graphic Design and Visual Culture specialising in Cold War visual cultures, émigré publishing, and tourism. She is a Senior Lecturer at Leeds Beckett University.
She completed her PhD in Art & Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, where her research examined image–text relations and national imaginaries through a Greek-language illustrated magazine published in East Germany (1961–1968).
Ikoniadou has held fellowships at the British School at Athens, the State Library in Berlin, and the Jan van Eyck Academie. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of European Periodical Studies, the Journal of Design History, and Humanities, as well as in edited volumes by Bloomsbury, Manchester University Press, and Routledge.
She has organised international conferences, including Pictures of War, The Politics of the Page, and the 11th ESPRit Conference. Her recent projects include East Germany as a Space for Solidarity Encounters? (British Academy/Humboldt), Imagining Greece (tourism and national identity), and Patterns of Migration (community research on textiles and mobility).
Ikoniadou co-directs the PARTICIPATE research cluster, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of European Periodical Studies (JEPS), and is Board Secretary of ESPRit.
Contact: m.ikoniadou@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg
Vincent Fröhlich is Acting Professor of Media Studies at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg. He studied Comparative Literature, German Literature, and Islamic Studies at the University of Bayreuth and the University of Bonn, and received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Justus Liebig University Giessen with a dissertation on cliffhangers as a transmedial narrative technique.
He was a principal investigator within the DFG Research Unit Journal Literature (FOR 2288) at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where his project examined illustrated film magazines as sites of remediation, visual seriality, and popular media knowledge.
His research focuses on periodical studies, visual media culture, and seriality, as well as on the media dynamics of conspiracy narratives. He is particularly interested in the material, aesthetic, and infrastructural conditions of media circulation.
Contact: vincent.froehlich@fau.de