Daisy is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Folklore. Her dissertation examines ruins, ruination, and archaeology in Rome during Italian Unification (1870–71), a moment when the emerging field of anthropology (demoetnografia/tradizioni popolari) began probing the underbelly of the city and its environs. Her research traces how such ethnographic and archaeological gazes perpetuated a colonial model of representation and forced modernization at the domestic level (Ó Giolláin 2023). Central to her work is the tension between ruins as sites of illicit activity and as celebrated heritage, and the ambivalent portrayal of the subaltern classes as both embodiments of Italy’s “national spirit” and as “ruined” subjects relegated to the discard pile of the nation. She also brings a spatial and psychogeographic lens to the city’s transformation, tracing how thefebbre edilizia(the speculative building boom unleashed by Rome’s new status as capital) reshaped both the physical landscape and the lived experience of its inhabitants. This includes mapping the displacement of communities from ruin-filled zones, the erasure of informal urban geographies, and the tensions between preservation and redevelopment.
She is also interested in and writes about Italian folk horror and Italian fascism and colonialism.
