Katharine Mitchell is an interdisciplinary feminist cultural studies researcher of modern Italy, working across and between literature, theatre, opera and film from the late nineteenth- and the early twentieth-centuries. She studies actual and imagined women performers, (screen)writers, readers, spectators, through close reading and analysis of their texts, including archival materials, such as journals, newspaper cuttings, letters, and diaries, and draws on a range of studies and theoretical frameworks in literature, film, media, theatre, and opera (e.g., new historicism, and feminist literary and media theory) to interpret her findings. Katharine has published widely in journals such as Italian Studies, The Italianist, MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, Romance Studies, and Rethinking History.

Her current project is funded by a Royal Society of Edinburgh Small Research Grant (awarded 2026). Before the Credits: Feminist Genealogies and the Making of Italian Women Film Pioneers, 1914-22, argues for a re-evaluation of the origins of early Italian feminist film culture through an intergenerational lens. Drawing on a feminist media archeological approach (archival material evidence in film and women's journals, as well as accounts of stars and evidence in life writings), she shows how the cohort of women writers and performers working across and between media from the 1880s onwards reveal networks of female solidarity, symbolic motherhood, and creative legitimation.

Katharine's monographs and edited volumes include Gender, Writing, Spectatorships: Evenings at the Theatre, Opera and Silent Screen in Late Nineteeth Century Italy and Beyond (Routledge, 2022), Matilde Serao: International Profile, Reception, and Networks (Classiques Garnier, 2022, co-edited), Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870-1910 (University of Toronto Press, 2014), Women and Gender in Post-Unification Italy (Peter Lang, 2013, co-edited), and special issues (co-edited) of Italian Studies on The Diva in Modern Italian Culture and Rethinking Neera for The Italianist (2015 and 2010 respectively).

Katharine is Senior Editor (post-1700) of Italian Studies and sits on the Advisory Board of Gender/Sexuality/Italy. She was a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College from 2012 to 2020, and has sat on the Society for Italian Studies' Executive Committee since 2020.

In 2019 Katharine co-founded the Interdisciplinary Network for Nineteenth-Century Italian Studies - Ottocentismi with three colleagues in the United States (at Seton Hall University, New Jersey; Florida State University, and City University, New York) and sits on its Executive Board.

In 2018 she was Principal Investigator of a Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded collaborative project with the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland on Scottish and European transnational exchanges in the long nineteenth century. Her workshops established the Scottish Network for Nineteenth-Century European Cultures under the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework which is housed at National Museums of Scotland. 

Katharine has held Visiting Fellowships at six international institutions: University of Cambridge (Centre for Research in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Easter Term, 2026); Loughborough University (2026); University of Oxford (Harris Manchester College, Michaelmas Term, 2022 & Trinity Term, 2019; St. Catherine's College, Hilary Term, 2019); Seton Hall University, New Jersey, United States (2014); California State University, Long Beach, United States (2014); and the University of Bologna, Italy (2014).

Katharine is a member of the Italian Girlhood Studies Research Network, a group of researchers dedicated to the discussion and study of girlhood in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Italian culture. The network was created by the AHRC-funded project (2021-24) 'A Girls' Eye View: Girlhood on the Italian Screen Since the 1950s' led by Professor Danielle Hipkins (University of Exeter) and Dr Romana Andò (University of Rome, La Sapienza). Between 2017 and 2021 she regularly discussed equality, diversity and inclusion issues on BBC Radio Scotland. At Strathclyde, Katharine is a member of the University's Feminist Network.

Since 2021, she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

Postgraduate Research Students

Emma Ottanelli (PhD Candidate, SGSAH(AHRC)-funded), 'Weaving a Web of Peace Across Borders: Transnational Connections in Feminist Anti-Nuclear Resistance at "La Ragnatela" and Greenham Common Women's Peace Camps', (2024 - );

Michelle Esrig-Munguia (MRes Candidate): 'Recasting Fantasy with Feminism: Twenty-First Century Romantic Fantasy Fiction', (2025 - ).

Postgraduate Research Completions

Francesca Masciullo, 'Denied and Disowned Motherhood in the Works of Dacia Mariani and Annie Ernaux' (Awarded in 2021)

Katharine welcomes PhD/MRes/MPhil enquiries for supervision on any aspect of gender, media, and feminism since the 1880s, particularly in relation to the following areas: 

• Spectatorships/audiences/readers;
• Celebrity culture;
• Feminist media history;
• Screenwriters and the female gaze.

Katharine's current project, Before the Credits: Feminist Genealogies and the Making of Italian Women Film Pioneers, 1914-22, argues for a re-evaluation of the origins of early Italian feminist film culture through an intergenerational lens. Drawing on a feminist media archaeological approach (archival material evidence in film and women's journals, as well as accounts of stars and evidence in life writings), she shows how the cohort of women writers and performers working across and between media from the 1880s onwards reveal networks of female solidarity, symbolic motherhood, and creative legitimation.

Katharine's most recent monograph, Gender, Writing, Spectatorships: Evenings at the Theatre, Opera and Silent Screen in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy and Beyond (Routledge, 2022), grew out of longstanding research interests first developed during her part-time MA by Research at the University of Leeds, which examined female roles in Italian tragic opera from Rossini to Puccini. After completing her PhD on Italian women writers' nineteenth-century journalism and fiction at the University of Warwick, she further developed these themes during her Junior Research Fellowship at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. It examines Italian women as protagonists and consumers of literature, theatre, opera, and film. Using personal writing, journalism, and canonical texts, it analyses female performance and women’s responses. Its interdisciplinary analysis of female relationships involving admiration illuminates a vibrant Italian female culture industry during early feminism.

Katharine's first book, Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism, 1870-1910 (University of Toronto Press, 2014), adopted a new historicist approach to analyse the domestic fiction and journalism of three of the most significant women writers of the period (La Marchesa Colombi; Neera; Matilde Serao). She showed how in spite of their anti-feminist public declarations, the writers' fiction and journalism intended for women readers offered an implicit feminist intervention and a legitimate means of approaching and engaging with the burning social and political issues of the day regarding the 'woman question'. It won a Finalist place in the Edinburgh Gadda Prize 2019 (Vittorio Group). 

Katharine teaches and supervises across undergraduate and postgraduate taught modules in Journalism, Media and Communication, Italian, and Gender Studies.

She has over twenty years' experience of teaching Italian literature, culture, and language in UK Universities (including Leeds; Warwick; Manchester; Cambridge), and since 2020 she has taught across modules in Gender Studies and Journalism, Media and Communication.

In 2021 Katharine was nominated by her students for a fourth Strathclyde Students’ Union Teaching Excellence Award and for a Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in the category Effective Sustained Contribution.

Katharine was External Examiner of the Italian programme at Royal Holloway, University of London between 2022 and 2026, and has externally examined four research dissertations: three MPhils at the University of Glasgow (2019), the University of Birmingham (2022), and the University of Kent (2023)), and one doctoral thesis (at the University of Warwick, 2025). At Strathclyde, Katharine has examined three doctoral theses and one MPhil thesis.

Katharine has supervised to completion an MRes on 'Denied and Disowned Motherhood in the Works of Annie Ernaux and Dacia Maraini' (2021), and is currently supervising two posgraduate research projects.

Katharine has guest-taught seminars and lectures nationally and internationally at Loughborough University (2026), the University of Oxford (2022), the University of Naples, 'Federico II' (2021), Columbia University, New York (2016), California State University, Long Beach (2014), and Seton Hall University, New Jersey (2014).

Feminist genealogies among women writers and performers;
Gender and modern celebrity culture;
Women film pioneers;
Spectatorships and the figure of the diva.