Francesca is a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC Starting Grant project AFROEUROPECYBERSACE at U Bremen.

Within the ERC project she focuses on the creation and construction of Afro-European identities and narratives in the literary and digital spaces of France and Italy. Her aim is to investigate the multiple intersections within and between national contexts through the lens of transmedia practices (literature, music, visual art, fashion, and digital space). In particular, she retraces how Afrodescendant writers, artists, and activists from France and Italy are reshaping the meaning of Europeanness and Blackness and challenging dominant representations.

Combining media studies, postcolonial studies and decolonial theories, her past research has investigated the cultural and identity in-betweenness of Francophone and Italophone diasporic writers . She has also explored how literature can be actualized by postcolonial authors and artists through music, performance, and visual art. She has organized international events on these topics with the International Association of Researchers in Popular and Mediatic Cultures (LPCM) and the International Association for the Study of African Literatures (APELA).

In 2023, Francesca received a PhD in French and Francophone Studies from the University of Roma Tre. She holds a double Master’s Degree in Modern Literatures (French and Italian) from the University of Rome La Sapienza and the University Paris-Sorbonne. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Musica rap e letteratura in Francia: le seconde generazioni come bacino d’innovazione socio-culturale, was published by L’Harmattan Italia in 2024.

For the research conducted during her PhD, which she presented at the 20^th^ and 21^st^ Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium in March 2022 in Pittsburgh, she was awarded the Prix de la Recherche au Présent 2022 by Princeton and Emory University.

She has also published several articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as SITES – Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Expressions maghrébines, Il Tolomeo – a Postcolonial Studies Journal, Ponti/Ponts, Itinéraires, Interculturel Francophonies, Dialogues Francophones, Novecento transnazionale.

She also teaches French and Translation Studies at the University of Macerata, Italy.

Her research interests include Afroeuropean studies, digital diaspora studies, critical race theory, ecopoetics, and afrofuturism.