DAVIDE RODOGNO

I obtained my PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies and the University of in 2001. Following my work with the World Bank in Lithuania, I was a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics from 2002 to 2004, and Foreign Associate Researcher at the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent in Paris from 2004 to 2005. I was a RCUK Academic Fellow at the School of History, University of St Andrews from 2005 to 2011, and a Swiss Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique – Research Professor from 2008 to 2011.  In 2011, I was appointed  Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute; Full Professor in 2014. I served as the head of the International History & Politics Department from 2014 to 2017.

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My doctoral thesis was published in Italian in 2003, and in English with the title 'Fascism's European Empire' by Cambridge University Press in 2006. I have been a grantee of the Rockefeller Archives Centre in 2011, and of the SNSF 'Sinergia' programme for a project entitled 'Patterns of Transnational Regulations'. My research interests include the history of humanitarianism, international organizations, philanthropic foundations, and international public health since the nineteenth century. In 2011, I published 'Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire (1815-1914), the Birth of a Concept and International Practice' with Princeton University Press.

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In 2012, I was commissioned by the Kofi Annan Foundation to write a confidential report documenting the experience of the United Nations and League of Arab States Joint Special Envoy for Syria. I have also co-edited and authored several volumes on the history of humanitarian photography, transnational networks of experts in the long nineteenth century, the League of Nations' social work; on sovereignty, nationalism, and the quest for homogeneity in interwar Europe. My latest monograph, 'Night on Earth – A History of International Humanitarianism in the Near East (1918-1930)', was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.

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From 2017 to 2022, I was the principal investigator of an SNSF project entitled 'The Myth of Homogeneity and Minority Protection in Belgium, Italy, and Spain'; and, of another project entitled 'The Heralds of Globalization: The Rockefeller Foundation Fellows (1910s-1970s)'. Since 2019, I have been collaborating with the History of International Organizations Network Internet HION, a platform I co-founded in 2008, and with https://genevemonde.ch/. I have also started a collaboration with the Museum of the Red Cross, and co-founded a podcast start-up called Utopia3, which, for three years collaborated with the Festival International et Forum des Droits Humains (FIFDH). I still collaborate with FIFDH assessing pre-selected films.

I have taught for the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne (EPFL), as well as several Executive Education programmes. Since 2016, I have co-directed and then directed The Executive Education Certificate in Advanced Studies on International Advocacy and Public Affairs. I also teach for the Graduate Institute Summer School and, from 2012 to 2024 I taught for the Smith College Geneva Centre (higher undergraduate level).

Together with my colleague Prof. Mohamedou, we acted as consultants for Google on two projects on the history and politics of racism. We also wrote a study on racist and controversial public spaces commissioned by the City of Geneva.

Since 2024, I co-direct the Geneva Graduate Institute Centre for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism.