Puck was already staying at the KNIR from 15 September to 24 November 2023 for a KNIR Scholarship for PhD students. She is doing her PhD in modern Italian history and the history of masculinity and violence. Her PhD project Trials of Honour. Masculinity, violence and emotions in the modern Italian military (1861-1919) was selected for the 2024 NWO PhD in the Humanities round. Her master thesis, titled Risorgimento on trial: competing masculinities amongst volunteers of the Third War of Italian Independence, was awarded the Werkgroep Italië Studies thesis prize in 2024 and with this award she was granted a stay at KNIR from 25 November to 20 December 2024.
In the autumn of 2022 she was granted a KNIR Scholarship for (R)MA students for her research From Mazzini to Mobilisation: tracing Risorgimento’s gendered rhetoric through the recruitment of Garibaldi’s Mille. This research combines the tools of cultural history, military history and rhetoric into a holistic project that sheds light on the ‘negotiation’ of gendered Risorgimento rhetoric among ‘Italians’ in the struggle for a unified Italy. Building on A.M. Banti’s notion of ‘figure profonde’, it compares propagandistic pamphlets with a vast amount of primary sources relating to the recruitment of volunteers for Garibaldi’s army in different regions.
