
AY 2025-26: Swiss Government Excellence (ESKAS) Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Lausanne
AY 2026-29 [postponed] FWO Junior Fellow, Ghent University
Previous positions:
AY 2024-25: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Naples Federico II, Dept. of Social Sciences
AY 2023-24: ‘Giulio Einaudi’ Research Fellow, Luigi Einaudi Foundation, Turin
Education:
Nov 2020-Jan 2024: PhD in Global Histories, Cultures and Politics at the University of Bologna, Dept. of History and Cultures. Final grade: Excellent cum laude. Supervised by Prof. Paolo Capuzzo. Defended on 17/6/2024. Thesis awarded the 2025 D’Attorre Prize.
AY 2018-20: MPhil in History and Oriental Studies, University of Bologna. Final grade: 110/110 cum laude. Supervised by Prof. Paolo Capuzzo and Prof. Saverio Marchignoli
AY 2014-17: BA in Philosophy, University of Bologna. Dissertation in History of Political Doctrines. Final grade: 110/110 cum laude. Supervised by Prof. Raffaele Laudani
Competitive international fellowships & funded research stays:
2025: Affiliated Research Fellow, Sciences Po Paris, Centre for History
Funding: Atlas Fellowship, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme
Jun-Jul 2025: Research Fellowship, Centre Jacques Berque, Rabat
Jun-Jul 2023: William P. Heidrich Research Fellowship, University of Michigan
Jan-Feb 2023: Visiting PhD, Université Mohammed V de Rabat, Dept. of English
Nov-Dec 2022: Visiting International Affiliate, University of Cape Town, Dept. of English
Oct 2021-Oct 2022: PhD Research Associate, Queen Mary University of London, School of History
Funding: Marco Polo mobility scholarship – University of Bologna
Sep 2019-Jan 2020: Erasmus+ mobility, King’s College London
Sep 2016-Jan 2017: Erasmus+ mobility, Université de Toulouse 2 – Le Mirail
Prizes & awards
2025: D’Attorre Prize, Best PhD thesis in Contemporary History
2024: ‘TOP TEN Young Scholars’ Award, Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna
2023: Annual Article Prize – Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History
2017: Excellence Student Scholarship – University of Bologna
Working languages:
Italian: Native Language
English: C2
French: C1 (DALF Alliance Française)
Modern Standard Arabic: Level 3 (Qalam wa Lawh Center, Rabat)
Portuguese, Spanish: Receptive Skills
Teaching experience:
AY 2024-25: Teaching of MA course (Political History, 42 hours) at the University of Naples Federico II, Dept. of Social Sciences.
AY 2024-25: Co-teaching of MA course (African History and Development, 20 hours) at the University of Turin, Dept. of Cultures, Politics and Societies.
2024, 2023: Teaching Assistant in the program ‘Duke in Bologna’, Duke University, Dept. of Romance Studies.
AY 2022-23: Joint supervision of MPhil thesis in African History, University of Bologna, Dept. of History and Cultures.
Affiliations:
SISSCo (Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History)
ASA (African Studies Association US)
Publications in peer-reviewed journals:
1. ‘The other shore of the Spanish Civil War: African anticolonialists and the Republican cause (1936-39),’ in A World without Empire? Encounters and Connections between African, European, and Soviet Communists, 1920s-70s, ed. by Silvio Pons (Pisa, Edizioni della Normale, 2025, in press), 22 pp [research essay].
2. ‘Ricerche transimperiali sull’anticolonialismo. Nuove spazialità e metodologie’, Il Mestiere di Storico XVI, no. 1-2 (2024): 33-64 [historiographical essay].
3. ‘The transnational policing of anticolonialists: imperial intelligence, revolutionary networks, and their archives, 1905-45’, Contemporanea 26, no. 1 (2023): 143-57 [review article].
4. ‘The Hands Off Ethiopia campaign, racial solidarities and intercolonial antifascism in South Asia (1935-1936)’, Journal of Global History 18 (2023): 47-67 [research article].
5. ‘Three pan-Africanist readings of the “Moorish” participation in the Spanish Civil War. Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and George Padmore’, Contemporanea 23, no. 2 (2020): 201-24 [research article].
Conference papers:
‘Procolonial censorship and “seditious” literature: The British and French models in colonial Africa and the Caribbean’. Legal Histories of Empires Conference, Toronto. 11 July 2025.
‘The Italian aggression of the Ethiopian empire, anticolonial peace activism and Arab-Islamic solidarities, 1935-44’. Peace Movements and Decolonization Collaborative Research Week, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 19 May 2025.
‘The “seditious” (anti)colonial press in interwar Africa and the Caribbean: racialized censorship and the suppression of translocal solidarity in the British and French empires’. European Social Science History Conference, Leiden University, 26 March 2025.
‘The Italian Latecomer Empire through Colonial Eyes: “Anticolonial Politics of Comparison” and 1930s Pan-Arab Publics’. International workshop Among Empires: Transimperial Circulation of Political Models. The Case of Four “Latecomers” (Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Japan), University of Turin, 114 February 2025.
‘The Communist Party of South Africa’s (1921-1950) multilingual propaganda network across Southern Africa and the African diasporas’. African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago. 12 December 2024.
‘Anti-Colonial and Anti-Racist Iconography across Africa and the Diaspora: Visual Language and Circulation (1910s-60s)’. International conference Turning the Map Upside Down: Connected Histories of Decolonization, Third Worldism, and Radical Activism, Università di Torino. 27-28 May 2024.
‘“Black (Wo)Men in Red Russia”: Narratives of Radicalization by African American Communists, 1930s-70s’. International workshop Autobiographical practices in 20th century global communism, Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna. 18 April 2024.
‘The other shore of the Spanish Civil War: African anticolonialists and the Republican cause (1936-39)’ (25-27 October 2023). International conference A World without Empire? Encounters and connections between African, European, and Soviet Communists, 1920s to 1970s, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.
‘The cross-cultural transformation of the European radical tradition in Southern Africa (1921-45)’ (22 September 2023). Workshop Marxism in Motion: The intellectual history of Marxism in and about the Global South during the early twentieth century, University College London.
‘Récupération et circulation des images’ (21 March 2023). Seminar Les pratiques d’influence aux XXe et XXIe siècles, EHESS École des hautes études en sciences sociales.
‘The Afrodiasporic debate on the colonial and racial dimension of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)’ (7 February 2023). Seminar Ateliers Ouverts de la Recherche, Center for Global Studies de l’Université Internationale de Rabat.
‘”Echoed and re-echoed”: Radical print cultures in dialogue across the Black Atlantic (1918-33)’ (22-24 June 2022). Workshop Recasting subjects and subjectivities in the writing of history: strategies, spaces and conflicts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, PhD in Global History and Governance.
‘Reti di informazione e propaganda anticoloniale fra continente e diaspora africana, 1917-45’ (6-8 June 2022). XVI Workshop Nazionale Dottorandi Sissco, University of Catania, Department of Political and Social Sciences.
Co-organizer of the Seminar Black Marxism 40 years on: Current and interdisciplinary engagement with Cedric J. Robinson’s “racial capitalism”’ (21 April 2022). University of Bologna, PhD in Global Histories, Cultures and Politics.
‘“To translate the ideas of the social revolution into the Bantu idiom”: the Communist Party of South Africa and the problem of multilingual propaganda (1915-38)’ (9-10 March 2022). Workshop Building connections between Soviet, European, and African communists, 1920s to 1960s, University of Bologna, Department of History and Cultures.
‘Black anticolonial internationalism and the rise of global fascism: the African and Afrodiasporic participation in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)’ (27 October 2021). SOAS History Seminar, SOAS University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), Department of History.
‘The diasporic history of Umsebenzi, the first newspaper of the Communist Party of South Africa’ (6 October 2021). Giornata di Studi 2021, University of Bologna, PhD in Global Histories, Cultures and Politics.
‘Pan-Africanism or Communism? The global revolution in the pages of the Negro World (1918-33)’ (4 March 2021). Workshop Un mondo senza imperi. Reti, incontri e immaginario dei comunisti nell’epoca della decolonizzazione in Africa, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.