Meet the Finalists of the 2026 ISSNAF Young Investigator RnB4Culture Award
Established in 2021 by RnB4Culture, this award recognizes the vibrancy of research in Italian culture and its evolving nature expressed in a variety of ways such as innovative uses of technology, or originality of approach, or contribution to wider questions and trends in the Humanities at large.
We’re thrilled to announce and celebrate the outstanding finalists for this year’s edition:
Fabrizio Aimar
Viola Ardeni
Stefania Porcelli
The winner will be announced on November 12 at the ISSNAF 2026 Annual Event in Washington, D.C.
The Jury, chaired by Franco Pierno (Toronto University), also includes Gianni Cicali (Georgetown University), Maria Gallo Stampino (University of Miami) and Stefano Jossa (Royal Hollaway).
Learn more about the three finalists and their researches.
FABRIZIO AIMAR
Fabrizio Aimar, MArch, PhD. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Practice at Texas A&M University, United States, where he also coordinates the Department of Architecture’s Italy Study Abroad Program in Florence. From 2023 to 2026, he served as Director of the Center for Heritage Conservation and held the endowed title of David Woodcock Professor in Historic Preservation. Previously, he was Lecturer (2021–2023) and Head of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering (2022–2023) at POLIS University in Tirana, Albania.
He has authored numerous scholarly publications, including a monograph, 4 edited books, and 34 articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. He presented his monograph at the University of Cincinnati, the University of Georgia, Texas A&M University, the Italian Cultural & Community Center of Houston, and UNISCAPE.
His innovative approach to teaching has been recognized with the Teaching Excellence Award for Early Career Faculty (2026) from the College of Architecture and the Undergraduate Faculty Award (2025, 2026) from the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University.
He served on the Advisory Board of the Italian Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale and spoke at one of the nine official collateral events of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale at large.
https://www.arch.tamu.edu/directory/fabrizio-aimar/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabrizio-aimar-907376298/
Research Focus
Fabrizio Aimar’s research examines how cultural landscapes and built heritage absorb, resist, and adapt to change. Grounded in his 2024 Springer monograph, "The Resilience of Cultural Landscapes. Perspectives from UNESCO World Heritage Sites", it develops a framework for landscape resilience, drawing on UNESCO World Heritage sites, particularly in Italy. His work integrates heritage conservation, urban and territorial planning, community participation, and memory studies, and extends to adaptive reuse, urban green infrastructure, and public space in Albania and rural Texas. Recent joint research projects address the resilience of inland rural heritage to natural hazards and the use of artificial intelligence to document disappearing rural built heritage.
This research is important because landscapes and historic places face converging pressures (natural hazards, touristification, land consumption, and rapid urbanization) that threaten both their physical fabric and the identities and memories they sustain. Responding requires moving beyond static preservation toward adaptive, community-engaged management. Aimar’s work provides planners, heritage managers, and local communities with an evidence-based approach for safeguarding heritage as a living system, supporting resilient territories.
VIOLA ARDENI
Viola Ardeni is Assistant Professor of Italian and the Italian Language Area Head in the Department of World Languages & Literatures at California State University, Sacramento, where she arrived in 2023 after working as Visiting Lecturer at Indiana University, Bloomington and as Italian Language Coordinator at the University of California, Davis. Viola holds a Ph.D. in Italian from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Laurea magistrale in Italianistica from the Università di Bologna, where she also completed a Laurea in Lettere moderne. Viola grew up in Bologna wanting to be a school teacher and to study abroad. After participating in the Erasmus program in France and the Overseas program in the United States as a college student of Italian literature, she applied to doctoral programs in North America where she could conduct research in the humanities and train as an instructor. Studying under the mentorship of Lucia Re, Thomas Harrison, John Agnew, Remo Bodei, and Stefano Colangelo, among many others, was enlightening. Learning how to teach university courses from Elissa Tognozzi also proved to be a transformative experience, and Viola resolved to pursue a career as scholar and college educator of Italian language, literature, cinema, and culture.
Research Focus
Viola Ardeni’s research focuses on the representation of women in Italian fairy tales and on women’s roles in creating such tales. Her research is structured around three axes: 1) the investigation of the narrative and societal workings allowing for dynamics of oppression in widespread Italian fairy tales, especially regarding women; 2) the analysis of the roles held by women within the stories and in the production of fairy tales in Italian history since the seventeenth century; and 3) the commitment to generating engaged, feminist criticism of fairy tales. By positioning at the front and center of her research different forms of societal discrimination (like differential treatments due to gender, race, age, and class), Viola maintains an impactful and relevant research agenda. As original and reimagined fairy tales remain ubiquitous in the contemporary media landscape and conversations in Italy and abroad regarding women’s rights and their position within the family and society at large are commonplace, she meaningfully participates in such debates by engaging in guest lectures and conference presentations and with the publication of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, translations as well as a book, currently underway, inspired by her doctoral dissertation.
About Her
Viola Ardeni is passionate about her work as a scholar of Italian fairy tales but is equally interested in second-language pedagogy, research on children’s literature and girlhood, and ecocritical and translation theories. With her colleague Kristina Vassil, she is also proud co-executive producer of the student-led podcast The Language Lab, where students attending California State University, Sacramento explore the beauties and challenges of language learning, cultural differences, and being in community. When Viola is not writing, teaching, or producing podcasts, she enjoys cycling, going to the movie theater, and reading historical novels.
STEFANIA PORCELLI
Stefania Porcelli is Doctoral Lecturer in the Department of Romance Languages at Hunter College (City University of New York), where her research and teaching focus on Italian language, literature, and culture, with a particular emphasis on contemporary Italian literature, women’s writing, affect theory, and the intersections of emotion, gender, and historical experience. She has published on authors including Hannah Arendt, Anna Banti, Elizabeth Bowen, Elsa Morante, Goliarda Sapienza, and Elena Ferrante, and co-edited a special issue of Annali d’italianistica dedicated to "50 Years of La Storia: Elsa Morante Beyond History" (2024). She is also a translator of both nonfiction and poetry and serves as Managing Editor of Annali d'italianistica. Her book manuscript, "A Theory of Intensity: History, Emotions, and the Female Character in the Contemporary Italian Novel," reconsiders the position of female characters vis-à-vis history in the works of Morante, Sapienza and Ferrante through the lens of emotional and linguistic intensity.
Research Focus Stefania Porcelli is Doctoral Lecturer in the Department of Romance Languages at Hunter College (City University of New York), where her research and teaching focus on Italian language, literature, and culture, with a particular emphasis on contemporary Italian literature, women’s writing, affect theory, and the intersections of emotion, gender, and historical experience. She has published on authors including Hannah Arendt, Anna Banti, Elizabeth Bowen, Elsa Morante, Goliarda Sapienza, and Elena Ferrante, and co-edited a special issue of Annali d’italianistica dedicated to "50 Years of La Storia: Elsa Morante Beyond History" (2024). She is also a translator of both nonfiction and poetry and serves as Managing Editor of Annali d'italianistica. Her book manuscript, "A Theory of Intensity: History, Emotions, and the Female Character in the Contemporary Italian Novel," reconsiders the position of female characters vis-à-vis history in the works of Morante, Sapienza and Ferrante through the lens of emotional and linguistic intensity.
About Her My book is under review, but I should receive the results of the review before the award ceremony. My next projects include an examination of representation of earthquakes in literature and the translation of Paola Loreto's collection of poetry, In quota e altre ascese (2012). I am also one of the editors of the Oxford Handbook of Goliarda Sapienza.
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