Esme Hodson

My doctoral project focusses on 20th century literary and visual works by Italian women auteurs. I draw on Material Culture Studies as well as discussions of the role of consumer culture in the shaping of gender roles in the mid 20th century, exploring the role of material objects in the perpetuation or subversion of social hierarchies and hegemonies. I aim to discover how objects are coded with particular sets of socially determined values in these works, and how these values may or may not be subverted or transcended in a move back towards a state of emancipatory non-definability.

My research is co-supervised by professor Emma Bond and Professor Guido Bonsaver, and is funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP, Trinity College’s Christie Miller scholarship and the Clarendon Fund.

I graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2022 with a MA (hons) in French and Italian, a Masters from the University of Geneva in Translation studies in 2024 and a MSt from Oxford in 2025.