The conference “Detecting Europe in Contemporary Crime Narratives: Print Fiction, Film, and Television” on 21-23 June 2021 wraps up DETECt, a European research project investigating the crime genre in relation to the creation of a shared European identity.

Over 80 international scholars and professionals will speak in 21 panels, while a professional jury will award the winners from the 250 participants in the crime TV series script contest.

From 21 to 23 June 2021, Link Campus University will host the final conference of the project DETECt – Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives.
The conference, entitled “Detecting Europe in Contemporary Crime Narratives: Print Fiction, Film, and Television”, will be free of charge, after registration, and will take place mainly online. Over 80 international experts will discuss the crime genre in literature, film, and TV series, debate the representations and stereotypes linked to gender, crime, and minorities, and analyse the different geographical declinations of crime, from Mediterranean to Nordic noir. The 21 panels will be interspersed with plenary sessions that will be streamed live on Link Campus University channels (Facebook and YouTube) and during which speakers Theo D’haen (University of Loviano and Leiden), Janet McCabe (Birkbeck, University of London) and Peppino Ortoleva (University of Turin) will intervene.

DETECt is a research project funded by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon 2020 programme and focuses on identity and popular culture: it seeks to show how the transnational circulation of crime-related cultural and creative products from different EU countries has contributed to the formation of an intercultural and shared European identity since 1989.

During the three and a half years of the project, which will end in October 2021, DETECt has identified and analysed the importance of the crime genre within the new European serial landscape, its production, distribution and consumption practices which, within popular culture, foster the emergence of unprecedented representations of European identity. International products from all European countries included: La casa de papel (Spain), Peaky Blinders and Killing Eve (UK), Babylon Berlin and Dogs of Berlin (Germany), Hackerville (Romania), the co-production The Pleasure Principle (Poland, Czech Republic and Ukraine), Dicte and The Killing (Denmark), The Bridge (Sweden, Denmark), Beforeigners (Norway), Trapped (Iceland), Gomorrah and Inspector Montalbano (Italy).

Some of the main areas of research have considered:

• the representation of the female figure in crime fiction in various European countries;
• the role of production and distribution on digital platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and RaiPlay in the construction of a shared identity;
• the composition of crime fiction audiences and the peculiarities on a European and local scale of the consumption of creative and cultural products in the crime genre.

Among the main initiatives carried out during the project, it is worth mentioning a free online course (MOOC) dedicated to European crime, recently available on the Edx platform; a digital atlas for mapping European crime production; an App dedicated to crime narratives places, already available for the city of Aarhus (Denmark) and under development for Bologna.

Last month the “DETECt Crime Series Contest”, a scriptwriting competition for TV series in the crime genre, was closed. Among the participants: TV authors and scriptwriters, either professional or in training, interested in developing a detective or noir plot with a European perspective. Over 250 proposals were received, but only five will make it to the finals and will be examined by a prestigious international jury, made up of esteemed professionals from the audio-visual sector: Karen Hassan (Cattleya), Steve Matthews (HBO Europe), Giacomo Poletti (Mediaset Group), Eva Van Leeuwen (Netflix). President of the jury will be Maurizio de Giovanni, author of the Commissario Ricciardi, Bastardi di Pizzofalcone and Mina Settembre novels, three successful TV series aired on Rai Uno.

Keynote Speakers

Theo D’haen (Leuven University and Leiden University)
Janet McCabe  (Birkbeck, University of London)
Peppino Ortoleva (University of Turin)

Conference Chairs: Monica Dall’Asta (University of Bologna), Federico Pagello (D’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara), Valentina Re (Link Campus University)

Advisory Board: Stefano Arduini (Link Campus University), Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna), Jan Baetens (KU Leuven), Luca Barra (University of Bologna), Stefano Baschiera (Queen’s University Belfast), Giulia Carluccio (University of Turin), Silvana Colella (University of Macerata), Caius Dobrescu (University of Bucharest), Andrea Esser (University of Roehampton), Nicola Ferrigni (Link Campus University), Katarina Gregersdotter (Umeå University), Kim Toft Hansen (Aalborg University), Annette Hill (University of Lund), Dominique Jeannerod (Queen’s University Belfast), Sandor Kalai (University of Debrecen), Matthieu Letourneux (University Paris Nanterre), Natacha Levet (University of Limoges), Giacomo Manzoli (University of Bologna), Janet McCabe (Birkbeck University), Jacques Migozzi (University of Limoges), Andrew Pepper (Queen’s University Belfast), Marica Spalletta (Link Campus University)

Organizing Committee: Luca Antoniazzi (University of Bologna), Sara Casoli (University of Bologna), Massimiliano Coviello (Link Campus University), Paola De Rosa (Link Campus University)

Students Staff: Eleonora Mercuri, Nicola Pimpinella, Lavinia Sansone (Link Campus University, undergraduate degree programme in Film and Theatre Making)

The conference is also supported by CUC – Consulta Universitaria del Cinema and by PIC-AIS – Associazione Italiana di Sociologia, Sezione Processi e Istituzioni Culturali (Italy).