University in Verona, Italy
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Julia graduated from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) with a master’s degree in Communication Science, she specialised in Media Psychology and Political Communication. After graduating, Julia started her academic career as a research assistant and junior lecturer at the VU Department of Communication Science where she taught courses on research principles, network society, social media analytics, and health communication. Within the ELIT network (ESR5), Julia is working on a research project at the University of Verona under the supervision of Prof. Massimo Salgaro, and at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elly Konijn.
Julia has a special interest in text perception and readers’ emotions. Previously, she studied emotionality in fake news perception. As an ELIT ESR, Julia’s research topic is ‘Literary Empathy and Morality’. The PhD-project is about aesthetic and empathetic responses to immoral figures in literary narratives. Julia studies different processes that potentially lead to aesthetic appreciation and empathy for negative figures – such as moral judgment and moral disengagement. As the main hypothesis, Julia argues that a shift in morality is needed before one can appreciate or empathise with an immoral figure – this shift in morality can be established through fictionality (vs. autobiographical) or context of reading (e.g., solitary vs. shared reading)