139 JICMS 5 (1) pp. 139–143 Intellect Limited 2017 Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies Volume 5 Number 1 © 2017 Intellect Ltd Conference Report. English language. doi: 10.1386/jicms.5.1.139_7 CONFERENCE REPORT RACHEL JOHNSON AND ALAN O’LEARY University of Leeds Workshop report: Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories The University of Leeds Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories (#ICIH) workshop took place in Leeds on 22 and 23 March 2016. It was the fifth workshop held as part of the Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories project, an initiative led by Alan O’Leary (Leeds) with co-investigators Austin Fisher (Bournemouth), Robert Gordon (Cambridge) and Catherine O’Rawe (Bristol). The project is intended to ‘provide a radically extended account of the modes, genres and registers in which dramatic Italian films have dealt with the history of Italy’. 1 The Leeds workshop brought together scholars and non-academic partners from across the world in order to clarify research priorities and methods around the theme of film and history in the Italian and other contexts, and to work towards a major funding bid, in this case to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). 2 The #ICIH workshop featured six panels in which brief position papers were presented, followed by comments from a respondent and discussion. Panels focused on the definition of historical film, on methodologies and approaches, and on public engagement, or ‘impact’. It also hosted a keynote talk by Ruth Ben-Ghiat (New York University), entitled ‘The weight of history in the Italian cinema’, and presentations of books by Giacomo Lichtner (University of Victoria at Wellington), Bernadette Luciano (Auckland) and Susanna Scarparo (Monash), Catherine O’Rawe, and Christian Uva (Roma Tre). The ambition, interculturality and interdisciplinarity of the #ICIH project was exemplified in the workshop, notably in Ben-Ghiat’s keynote talk, which 1. For more information, see http://arts.leeds. ac.uk/italian-cinemas- italian-histories/about/, accessed 13 May 2016. 2. For full information on workshop participants and papers, see the programme at http:// tinyurl.com/gskqu65, accessed 13 May 2016.