Dr. Carmen Belmonte

Carmen Belmonte is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at Roma Tre University. She coordinates the research unit Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture within the project SPAZIDENTITÀ. Spazialità materiale e immateriale della costruzione nazionale italiana dalla Repubblica Cisalpina alla fine del Fascismo, co-funded by the École Française de Rome (2022–2026).

Her research focuses on the visual culture and legacy of Italian colonialism and fascism, as well as on cultural heritage in contemporary Italy.
She studied at the University of Calabria (B.A. 2004, M.A. 2007) and at the University of Pisa ("Diploma di Specializzazione" in Art History, 2011). At the LARTTE LAB of the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa she was a research fellow within the project Osservatorio delle politiche per il patrimonio culturale (2009–2011). During her PhD in Art History (University of Udine, 2017) she was a member of the Swiss Doctoral Program in Civiltà Italiana at the University of Lugano (2013–2016) and a visiting scholar at the European University Institute, Fiesole (2015–2016).
She was awarded postdoctoral fellowships from the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte (2017–2018), the American Academy in Rome (2018–2019), the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (2019–2021), and the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at the Columbia University, New York (2020).
In 2019 she organized the conference "A Difficult Heritage: The Afterlife of Fascist-Era Architecture, Monuments, and Works of Art in Italy" (11–12 March 2019, Bibliotheca Hertziana, American Academy in Rome) and is currently editing a multi-authored volume on the same topic.