Francesca Piana is a historian of European and international history in the 20th century. Her research and teaching interests include international organizations, transnationalism, humanitarian aid and the mission, migration, and women and gender. She holds a PhD and a MA in international history and politics from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and a BA in international studies from the University of Trieste.

From 2013 to 2016, Dr. Piana was a postdoctoral researcher of the Swiss National Science Foundation, based at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and Birkbeck College. In 2016-2017, she was a postdoctoral fellow in women’s and gender history at Binghamton University. Since 2018, she has had several teaching positions at the University of Geneva. She is also a researcher at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. 

Selected publications

• Francesca Piana and Joanne Laycock (eds), Aid to Armenia. Humanitarianism and intervention from 1890s to the present (Manchester, Manchester University Press, October 2020).
• Francesca Piana, “Fra protezione sociale e lotta alla disoccupazione. Le negoziazioni e l’assistenza tecnica del Bureau international du travail a favore dei rifugiati russi (1919-1925),” Studi Storici 4 (2021), 857-887.
• Francesca Piana, “L’Estonie et l’échange des prisonniers de guerre entre Allemagne et Russie, 1918-1922,” Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande, 52-2 | 2020, 317-340.
• Francesca Piana, “Maternalism and feminism in medical aid. The American Women’s Hospitals in the United States and in Greece, 1917-1941”, eds. Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann, and Katharina Storing, Gendering global humanitarianism in the twentieth century. Practice, politics and the power of representation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020): 85-114.