On Female Collaborations within the Frame of Audience Research. A Girls’ Eye View between Changes, Chances and Challenges

In this brief piece we discuss the role of collaboration in our research project, A Girls’ Eye View, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK in 2021. The project is both the result and the ongoing story of multiple collaborations, mostly all-female collaborations, between academic scholars of different generations, schools, teachers, students, and female professionals in the field of Italian media productions. The main objective is to understand the relationship (if there is one) between Italian TV and cinema content and young female audiences. At the same time, this research aims to fill the significant gap in girlhood studies in Italy, where public reflection and debate about female media representations and women’s conditions are needed as fundamental keystones of any feminist project. Finally, the research aims to create a bridge between the media industry and young female audiences, starting from the shortage of female gazes behind the camera in the Italian cinema and TV industry and the need for a new pact between producers and consumers. In our first published written reflection on the project we discuss how it has been shaped by changes, chances, and challenges, and how we have addressed those as a team