Biographie

Born and raised in Southern Italy, I read Contemporary History at the University of Bologna. After a brief venture in the publishing industry, I completed a MSc and a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. In 2013, I was selected to participate to the ‘8^th International Seminar on Decolonization’ organised by the National History Center, in Washington DC. I then took up a position as a post-doctoral researcher at the Bayreuth Academy for Advanced African Studies. In 2015, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence. More recently, I was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. I have taught a number of courses on decolonization, humanitarianism, politics and powers in Africa, and theoretical approaches to Global History. In Geneva, I am part of the project ‘Decolonization as regional experience and global trend: understanding a global phenomenon through processes from West African, 1950-1977’ coordinated by Alexander Keese and financed by the SNF.

Key publications

• (with Antonio Varsori), L’eccidio di Mogadiscio, (Il Mulino, forthcoming);
• A ‘grandiose future for Somalia’: Colonial developmentalist discourse, agricultural planning and forced labor (1900-1940), International Labor and Working Class History, 92, 2017;
• ‘That is why we have troubles’: the pro-Italia movement’s challenge to nationalism in British-occupied Somalia (1946-9), The Journal of African History, 57:3, 2016.