Dr Acciari studied Film Studies at University of Bologna (Italy), where she obtained her BA and a first MA in Film History, working on Federico Fellini’s unpublished radio plays. She obtained a second MA in New Media Management from the European Institute of Design in Milan. Dr Acciari's doctoral research was conducted at the University of Manchester with a fully funded AHRC project entitled “Indo-Italian screens and the Aesthetic of Emotions”. Her principal research interests lie in the areas of Film and Cultural studies. Her areas of research are: film festivals; popular Hindi cinema; new-wave Indian cinema; Transnational cinema and South Asian diasporic cinema; cinema and ethnicity; film history and ethnicity; audience studies; film restoration and preservation; and cultural theory. Dr Acciari is particularly interested in qualitative research methods, and the use of sociological and ethnographic methodologies as applied to popular culture, in addition to historical and archival research.

Film Festivals, New-wave Indian cinema, Bollywood cinema, Transnational cinema and Cosmopolitanism, Film and ethnicity: Representation of white women in South Asian cinema (historic and contemporary views), Film Restoration and Preservation, Cinema, city and the communities, History of European-Indian Co-productions, South Asian cinema and European heritage sites (Mapping and Data Visualization)