Dr Giulia Morale

Before joining St John's in October 2025, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome. I completed my doctorate in 2024 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, with a thesis titled 'Sicilian Abstraction and Transnational Modernism in Italy and Beyond (1950s-1970s)'. I hold an MSt from the University of Oxford and BA from UCL.

My research explores modern art in the Mediterranean in the twentieth century through the lens of human mobility and material circulation. The territorial, linguistic, and ethnic divides between Europe and North Africa have separated knowledge of art and culture into stagnant national categories overlooking their interconnectedness. In recent decades, these conceptual divisions have been further consolidated by the sea becoming a highly bureaucratised frontier between the global North and South, as well as a site of recurring humanitarian catastrophes. And yet, the cooperation of ports across the Mediterranean has been essential for maritime transportation of commodities and peoples, and in turn the advancement of global capitalism. My project asks how art and artists reflected, challenged or negotiated identitarian, political and discursive constructions of the Mediterranean.

Recent Publications

Morale, G., ‘From Rome to Rabat: Carla Accardi’s encounters with Moroccan modernism’, Art History 47, no. 3 (June 2024): 432–435.

Morale, G., ‘Unrecorded and Unwritten: Pietro Consagra and Carla Lonzi, 1969’, Sharon Hecker and Teresa Kittler (eds), Art and Intimacy in Modern Italy: Entangled Lives, (London: Bloomsbury, 2025)