IMS PhD Graduate Awarded Leverhulme Study Abroad Studentship

Francesca Petrizzo, IMS PhD Graduate, has been awarded a Leverhulme Study Abroad Studentship attached to the Universita di Toma 2 Tor Vergata, starting in October 2018.

Francesca Petrizzo, an IMS PhD student who passed her viva earlier this month and will shortly graduate, has been awarded a Leverhulme Study Abroad Studentship. This year-long studentship will be undertaken at the Universita di Roma 2 Tor Vergata, beginning in October 2018. Petrizzo's project is titled 'Tancred: The Lives and Afterlives of a Hauteville Crusader'. 

Petrizzo researched the family dynamics of the Norman Hautevilles between Southern Italy and Syria while at the University of Leeds, and she is expanding on this research during her studentship. In particular, Petrizzo explained she will be 'using my time in Italy to research Tancred's cultural reception and heroic construction from the eyewitness accounts and histories of the crusades to the modern day, focusing especially on Torquato Tasso's 16th century poem Gerusalemme liberata and its enduring influence'. 

Although Petrizzo is 'excited about this chance to further develop the research I first began at Leeds', she admits that she 'will miss Leeds a great deal'. Overall Petrizzo described earning her PhD at Leeds as a 'lovely experience' that 'enabled me to develop and pursue a postdoctoral project', and thanked the faculty and her peers for their support.