Biography

I specialize in economic and business history, with an emphasis on the history of Central and East-Central Europe. After graduating with honours in History at the University of Milan, I received my Ph.D. from Bocconi University in 2004, under the supervision of Prof. Franco Amatori. Since then my work has been funded through a research grant from the Institute for Economic History at Bocconi University (Milan).

The doctorate thesis, that will be soon published, is entitled “Taylorism and Socialism. The organisation of work and production in the Škoda Auto factories in Mladá Boleslav (1948-1963)”.

In 2000 I was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences; in 2001 at the History, Industrial Relations, Russian and Eastern European Studies Departments of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, U.S.A, (mentor Prof. Jonathan Zeitlin), and in 2002 at the Graduate School of Economics in Kyoto, Japan (mentor Takashi Hikino).

I am currently working on the economic relationships and technological exchange between East and West during the Cold War years and I have a new research project regarding the activities of the automobile multinational corporations in Eastern and Central Europe.

My recent publications include: “Between American Fordism and “Soviet Fordism”: the Czechoslovak way towards mass production” forthcoming in A. Rees, P. Apor, B. Apor (eds), New Perspectives on Sovietisation; “Big business performance the 20th century: Italy” (with C. Brambilla et al.) in C. Bratauset (ed.) Essays in European business performance in the 20th century: Italy, LSE Business History Unit Occasional Paper, 1/ 2005; La Fiat nel mondo, il mondo della Fiat. Il mercato mondiale dell’auto e i lavoratori dell’industria automobilistica nelle carte dell’Archivio storico Fiat, Marsilio, 2002 (with C. Casalino).