(She/her) 2022 | MPhil in Film and Screen Studies; Emmanuel College, Cambridge University

I am Anna, 25 years old from York, England. I recently graduated with a degree in Modern and Medieval Languages from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, specialising in Italian Cinema. I am a wheelchair user with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which has been challenging whilst studying at a university with such historic buildings! I took a year out to work for Cambridge SU as the Disabled Students’ Officer with the aim to implement a variety of policies to improve the lives of disabled students within the university. Following this, I will be starting my MPhil in Film and Screen Studies also at Emmanuel College in October. 

I aim to research the representations of disabled people in Italian Cinema which draws on the work I started in my undergraduate dissertation. I am passionate about this area of research, as I believe that media representations of disabled people have real world consequences for our social conditions, yet there is a relatively small amount of writing on this topic.

The Snowdon Trust previously gave me funding to allow me to purchase my first electric wheelchair, which enabled me to embark on a year abroad to Milan to take part in an Erasmus programme studying film at Università degli Studi di Milano. Now receiving the Snowdon Scholarship has allowed me the financial stability to remain living in Cambridge in an adapted flat, and I hope will also allow me to take future research trips back to Italy! 

Outside of my area of study, I am a Eurovision super fan and I attended this year’s contest in Turin. I also love sewing and embroidery, and of course I watch way too many films.