Architecture Unveiled
I am a historian of architecture, politics, culture, and memory,
and of the relationships between those forces in different places and times.
Dr Hannah Malone
My Research
The role of architecture as politics and culture.
Architecture as politics and memory in everyday life
My research demonstrates how buildings and monuments are shaped by political and cultural forces that evolve over time - forces that, in turn, shape the minds and actions of those who occupy built space.
Italian Monumental Cemetries
Under a major strategy that politicised the dead, Italy's Fascist regime exhumed and reburied roughly 300,000 soldiers who fell in the First World War. The dead were relocated in a number of monumental ossuaries. Two of the largest, Monte Grappa and Redipuglia, now hold the remains of some 120,000 soldiers.
Fascist Ossuaries
Under a major strategy that politicised the dead, Italy's Fascist regime exhumed and reburied roughly 3000,000 soldiers that fell in the First World War. The dead were relocated in a number of monumental ossuaries. The largest, Redipuglia, now holds the remains of over 100,000 soldiers.
My History
Exploring Architecture, Politics, and Memory
Ph.D. History of Art, University of Cambridge
M.Phil. History of Art, University of Cambridge
B.A. Hons. History of Art & Italian, Trinity College, Dublin
2024 Assistant Professor in History of Modern Architecture,Trinity College, Dublin
2021 Assistant Professor of Contemporary History, University of Groningen
2019 Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
2017 Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, Freie Universität Berlin
2014 Lumley Junior Research Fellow Magdalene College, University of Cambridge
2014 Fellow, McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, Cambridge
2013 Rome Fellow, British School at Rome
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Member Columbia Seminar for Studies in Modern Italy
Association for the Study of Modern Italy
Funded Research and Visiting Professorships
2015 McDonald Institute of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
2016 British Academy
2016 Italian Commission for the Centenary of WWI
2017 Association for the Study of Modern Italy
2017 German Historical Society
2023 RUG Faculty start-up grant
2024 University of Padua
Networking and partnerships
Co-founder RUG Heritage & Memory research network
Co-founder comparative study of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany
Coordinator Cambridge Italian Research Network
International partner of the University of Rome
Invited Talks
Universities of Cambridge – Oxford – Padua – Groningen – Milan - Notre Dame Rome - Utrecht – Warwick - Freie Universität Berlin - Sarah Lawrence New York – Columbia - Trinity College Dublin – British Academy London - KNIR Rome - Monument and Mausolea Trust - Twentieth Century Society - Italienzentrum Berlin - Max Planck Berlin - British School at Rome - Swedish Institute in Rome - Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge
Panel Contributions
CENTRA, Genoa - British School at Rome - MPI Berlin – Cambridge - Brussels
Conferences Organised
KNIR Rome - Freie Universität Berlin - University of Cambridge - Academy of St Luke, Rome
Selected Publications
Books:
~ Fascist Italy and the Architecture of Death (forthcoming)
~ Architettura, morte e nazione: I cimiteri monumentali italiani (Pacini, 2025)
~ Architecture, Death and Nationhood: Monumental Cemeteries of nineteenth-century Italy (Routledge, 2017)
Articles:
~ Co-authored with Selena Daly and Vanda Wilcox, “Teaching the Difficult Heritage of Italian Fascism”, Modern Italy, 1, 11 (Nov. 2023). [OA]
~ “Redefining peace: Fascist Italy and fallen soldiers of the First World War”, Ricerche Storiche, special issue, “Transizioni. Dalla guerra alla pace nel Novecento”, LII, 2 (May-Aug. 2022): 63–78. Open
~ “The Fallen Soldier as Fascist Exemplar: Military Cemeteries and Dead Heroes in Mussolini’s Italy”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 64, 1 (January 2022): 34–62. [OA]
~ “The Republican legacy of Italy’s Fascist ossuaries of the First World War”, Modern Italy, special issue, “Difficult heritage: Negotiating the architectural and artistic legacies of Fascism in post-war and contemporary Italy” 24, 2 (March 2019): 199–217. Awarded the Christopher Seaton-Watson Prize. [OA]
~ “New life in the modern cultural history of death”, Historical Journal 62, 3 (2019): 833–52. Open
~ “Fascist Italy’s Ossuaries of the Great War: Objects or Symbols?”, RIHA Journal, special issue “War Graves, 1914-1989”, 0166 (27 June 2017) [OA]
~ “Legacies of Fascism: Architecture, Heritage and Memory in contemporary Italy”, Modern Italy, special issue “The Force of History”, 22, 4 (September 2017): 445–70. Open
~ “Redipuglia and the dead” in Mausolus (summer 2017), 26–33. Winner of Essay Prize of the Monuments and Mausolea Trust. Open
~ “Secularisation, anticlericalism and cremation within Italian cemeteries of the nineteenth century”, Modern Italy, 19, 4 (November 2014), 385–403. Awarded the ASMI essay prize. Open
Book chapters:
~ “The Material Legacies of Fascism and National Socialism: Conceptual and methodological challenges”, in Dictatorships and Material Heritage in Europe after 1945 (Routledge, forthcoming)
~ “Fascist Italy’s military cemeteries of the First World War as heritage and propaganda” in Architectures of Commemoration: First World War Cemeteries and Monuments in Europe, ed. (Brill, forthcoming 2026): 41–57.
~ “Burial sites” in Routledge Handbook of Rome since 1870, ed. Vanda Wilcox and Isabella Clough Marinaro (Routledge, forthcoming 2027).
~ “Immagini della Grande Guerra. Usi e riusi dei sacrari militari italiani dal Fascismo alla Repubblica” in Imagines. Usi e riusi di materiale visito in Europa dal medioevo all’età contemporanea (Milano University Press, 2025): 201–33. [OA]
~ “Questioning the idea of difficult heritage as applied to the architecture of Fascist Italy” in A Difficult Heritage: The Afterlives of Fascist-Era Art and Architecture, ed. Carmen Belmonte (Silvana Editoriale, 2023): 41–57. Open
~ “Modern cemeteries in Europe and North America” in The Cambridge Guide to the Architecture of Christianity, ed. Richard A. Etlin (Cambridge University Press, 2022), part IV: 911–22. Open
~ “Italian Fascism and the Politics of Grief” in Feeling Political: Emotions and Institutions since 1789, ed. Ute Frevert and Kerstin Maria Pahl (Palgrave, 2022). [OA]
~ “Cultivated and constructed memory in the Bonaria cemetery in Cagliari” in Gardening Time/Scavando nel tempo, ed. Simon Stoddart, Ethan D. Aines, and Caroline Malone (McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, 2021). [OA]
~ “Architecture, Politics and the Sacred in Military Monuments of Fascist Italy”, Modern Architecture and the Sacred, ed. Ross Anderson and Maximilian Sternberg (Bloomsbury, 2020). Open
~ “Monte Grappa: Il sito, il sacrario e la memoria” in Per non dimenticare: sacrari del Novecento/Lest we forget: Cemeteries and military ossuaries of twentieth-century Europe, ed. Maria Grazia D’Amelio (Accademia di San Luca, 2019). Open
~ “Marcello Piacentini: A case of controversial heritage” in Architecture as Propaganda in Twentieth-Century Totalitarian Regimes. History and Heritage (Polistampa, 2018). Open
~ “Il fascismo, la Grande Guerra e i monumenti ai caduti” in Visualizzare la guerra: l’iconografia del conflitto e l’Italia (Mimesis, 2017). Open
Special issue:
~ Co-edited with Christian Goeschel, “The Cultural Axis between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany”, European History Quarterly, 54, 2 (April 2024). [OA]
Media
~ “Fascism and Italy’s fallen soldiers”, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.
~ “The fascist virus is back again”, Renewal: a journal of social democracy, 28, 3 (2020), 48–51.
~ “Totalitarian architecture: how buildings are used as a statement of power, control & ideology”, The Pat Kenny Show, Newstalk radio, 17 May 2026
Articles featuring my research:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/23/pete-hegseth-nihilist-cult
https://eureports.com/2026/04/italian-council-to-take-over-mussolinis-former-residence/
Videos
~ Public lecture, “The Afterlives of Italy’s Fascist Part Headquarters from 1945 to today”, KNIR, Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, 2023.
https://youtu.be/dBlMg8HGpTo?si=8WRg1sK_FPixBCBI
~ Public talk, “Architecture, death, and propaganda: Italy’s Fascist monuments of the First World War”, Italienzentrum, Berlin, 12 November 2018.
https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/it/italienzentrum/veranstaltungen/archivio/2018/Malone.html
~ Public talk, “Origins and Endings”, Being Human festival, British Academy, London
An evening of four lectures highlighting the similarities and differences between the life journeys of Italians throughout history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S40g1F-w4BA
~ Lecture, “The rise of Italian Fascism, 1919-39”, MASSOLIT.
https://www.massolit.io/courses/the-rise-of-italian-fascism-1911-39
~ Conference presentation, “Monte Grappa: il sito, il sacrario e la memoria”, Lest we forget: Cemeteries and military ossuaries of twentieth-century Europe, Academy of St Luke, Rome, 31 March 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6h_9t2QyYg&list=PLWWFtzBR33T5vAxNYmtPL2T4D7DfDTu-D&index=17
~ Conference presentation, American Academy in Rome, 2023.
https://youtu.be/zjJ-oZTj6Do?si=O_-8rXA7bXMIGHdg
~ Panel discussion, “Fascist martyrs”, BSR, 2021.
https://youtu.be/s9TA33z6IGc?si=WHFE2Ll6wGD8nF8c
~ Book presentation, 2022.
https://youtu.be/_lsM6vctG_A?si=H_6Fgb4DB3_uQLmK
~ Public lecture 2023.
“The cities of the dead: Italy’s monumental cemeteries of the nineteenth century”, Monument and Mausolea Trust, UK.
~ https://www.flickr.com/photos/ukinitaly/33146829673/in/photostream/
Contact
Dr Hannah Malone, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College, Dublin
maloneha@tcd.ie
