BIO
I grew up in a small village by the sea in Sicily. When I was fifteen, my family moved to the hills of Mount Etna—an entirely different landscape. In 1990, we moved again—this time to Switzerland. That same year, I began my studies in International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. After completing my PhD in International History and Politics, I briefly left academia to work with the World Bank in Lithuania. It was a valuable experience, but I wanted to research and teach, so I returned to academic life. My journey took me first to the London School of Economics, then to Paris as a researcher at the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent. My first permanent academic position came as an Academic Fellow with the UK Research Council at the School of History, University of St Andrews. Those five years in Scotland were formative, both professionally and personally.
In 2008, I was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship—a milestone that allowed me to broaden both my research and teaching. Not long after, I returned to where it all began: the Graduate Institute in Geneva. I was appointed Associate Professor in 2011, became a Full Professor shortly after, and served as Head of the International History and Politics Department from 2014 to 2017. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to receive several competitive research grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, which have helped sustain and grow my academic work. Throughout this journey, I’ve built a network of colleagues and friends across Switzerland, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, India, Japan, and Australia. I’ve contributed to editorial boards, reviewed countless manuscripts and grant applications, and have often worked as a public historian, engaging broader audiences with the relevance of international history. In 2008, I co-founded the History of International Organizations Network (HION), and later began a rewarding collaboration with the Museum of the Red Cross. I also co-founded Utopia3, a podcast project that partners with the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH). Over the years, I’ve had the chance to work with media producers, which has only deepened my growing interest in digital humanities. Today, I co-direct the Graduate Institute’s Centre for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism.
Since 2020, I’ve had the privilege of serving as Head of the Interdisciplinary Master’s Programme at the Institute. It’s a role I hold with pride—not just as an administrative function, but as part of a broader intellectual and educational mission. I see it as a space where ideas, disciplines, and people converge in meaningful and sometimes unexpected ways. I remain a passionate researcher and teacher. I find great joy in working with students—whether in undergraduate classrooms, graduate seminars, or executive education settings. Teaching continues to inspire and challenge me, year after year, and I am planning to start a new research project when I step down from my service as Head of the Interdisciplinary program.
I teach and research on:
International organizations and associations, philanthropic foundations, transnational networks and movements since the 19thcentury;
The visual politics of international organizations;
An international history of racism;
The concept and practice of humanitarian interventions since the abolition of the slave trade;
The history of Western humanitarianism since the late 18th century;
The history and politics of military occupations since the Congress of Vienna;
Populist, authoritarian, fascist and totalitarian regimes;
The History of the Balkans and of the Ottoman Empire/Turkey (1815-1945);
The World Wars;
Advocacy and Public Affairs in International Affairs.
A PASSION FOR HISTORY AND POLITICS
I am an alumnus of the International History and Politics department of the old Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales. As a graduate student, I was driven by the desire to know more about Italy’s history and politics, the country my parents had left in 1990 in order to seek a brighter future. I started a Master's in 1994 and a PhD project, completed in 2000, on the history of fascism and more specifically Fascism’s European occupations. Being in Geneva and at the Institut meant my focus was on international relations. Among other events, the early 1990s were tragically marked by the Yugoslav Wars. I could easily connect the events I studied as part of my PhD with contemporary events. From 1940 to 1943, Fascist Italy had brutally occupied vast parts of this country from Slovenia to Croatia, from Serbia to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Studying military occupations entailed learning not only on the history of Italy but also on the history and politics of the Balkans. More broadly speaking, military occupations were, then as now, a controversial international practice.
Through my studies, I could better understand what was going on in the Middle East, another region that greatly interested me in the 1990s, at the time of the Oslo agreement and the first Intifada. In fact, through the study of fascism and its occupations in Europe, I acquired keys to make sense of current international politics. History connected me to the epoch I lived in. Thanks to the professors of the International History and Politics department, I could connect the Rwandan genocide of 1994 to the history of anti-Semitism and the history of the genocide of European Jews. Racism and anti-Semitism, colonial and imperial history became centres of interest that have remained with me until the current day. The interest in the history of genocides and massive violations of the most basic human rights, eventually, brought me to the history of the Armenians and sparked my interest for Ottoman history.
When I started my PhD, I had not imagined an academic career. I saw myself working for an international organisation or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). I knew, however, that the PhD was providing me with tools that I would later use in whatever professional career I would undertake : critical thinking, the management of long-term projects, commitment and perseverance in the face of adversities were invaluable skills that would serve me well.Right after earning my PhD, I worked for the World Bank.
Out of academia, I understood that my passion for history and politics was greater than I had previously realised, with its unparalleled flexibility and creativity in study, not to mention the intellectual freedom it offered. And so I returned to academia. Throughout the 1990s, humanitarian interventions were a highly debated international practice; studying their history and politics, their legal, political and moral history was a leap that made sense for me. After contemporary military occupations, I could move back in time and study another controversial international practice. Without being fully aware of it, I was connecting further dots: learning Ottoman history meant deepening my knowledge of the history and politics of contemporary Near- and Middle-East, of the Balkans and of the Mediterranean. Issues related to human rights and their massive violations, conflicts, political violence, massive forced displacements, the so-called ‘exchange’ of populations between Greece and Turkey became new centres of interest, passionately so. And, again the leap from humanitarian interventions to international humanitarian aid programs made sense. I became interested in the history of humanitarian organisations, NGOs, and philanthropic foundations, their visions of the world and practices from relief & rehabilitation to development programs, their visual politics, and back to colonial gaze, civilizational posture and racism.
What am I interested in now? I have a growing, quite irresistible passion for the history and imaginaries of fears… a theme I am starting exploring now as a passionate, absolute beginner.
