PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
I grew up in Sicily in a small village by the sea. My family moved to the hills of Etna when I was fifteen years-old. We all moved to Geneva in 1990. Here I studied International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies. After my PhD in International History and Politics I worked for the World Bank in Lithuania. I realised I wanted to research and teach, so I moved back to academia. My career started as a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and, later at the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent in Paris. My first permanent position was as an Academic Fellow of the Research Council (UK) at the School of History, University of St Andrews. In Scotland I spent five important formative years. I was awarded a Swiss Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique – Research Professorship (2008-2011), which allowed me to expand my teaching and research portfolios. My academic trajectory brought me back to my alma mater where my journey had started back in 1990. I was appointed Associate Professor in 2011 and Full Professor at the Graduate Institute. I served as head of the International History and Politics Department from 2014 to 2017.
Over the years I was awarded several competitive Swiss Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique research grants. In recent years, I was the principal investigator of an SNSF project entitled The Myth of Homogeneity and Minority Protection in Belgium, Italy and Spain; and of a second project entitled the Heralds of Globalization: the Rockefeller Foundation Fellows (1910s-1970s).
I have a network of colleagues in Switzerland, in Europe, in the Americas, South and North, in the Middle East, in India, Japan and Australia. I have been active in journals' editorial boards, as peer reviewer, as assessor and evaluator and devoted time and energy as a public historian. I co-founded the History of International Organizations Network Internet HION. I started a collaboration with the Museum of the Red Cross and co-funded a podcast start-up Utopia3 that collaborates with the Festival International et Forum des Droits Humains. I collaborated with media producers on several occasions, and have a growing interest in digital humanities. I co-direct one of the research centres of the Institute: the Centre for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism
Since 2020, I am the - very proud - Head of the Interdisciplinary Program of the Graduate Institute. The program underwent a thorough reform. This is much more than just an administrative service. I am part of a greater intellectual, academic and I would dare saying educational project. I am a passionate teacher. Since 2016 I co-directed first and then directed a Certificate in Advanced Studies on International Advocacy and Public Affairs. I teach for the Graduate Institute Summer School. From 2012 to 2024, I taught for the Smith College Geneva Centre (higher undergraduate level).
With my colleague Prof. Mohamedou we acted as consultants for Google on a project on the history and politics of racism. Together, we also wrote a study on racist and controversial public spaces commissioned by the City of Geneva.
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.
