Biography

I graduated cum laude in History at the University of Pisa (1999), gaining the prize as the youngest of my course. In 2004, I obtained a Ph.D. in History of European Society at the “Federico II” University of Naples and in 2006 a Specialization Diploma.
I have recently been annual post-doc fellow at the University of Pisa within the National Research Program “History and Political Communication”; Gulbenkian Fellow in Lisbon (2006), Audrey Lumsdem-Kouvel Fellow at the Newberry Library (Chicago 2005), and visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004).
My first research areas have been of political communication through funeral orations and biographies in the sixteenth century Italy. I studied the case of Cosimo I de’ Medici, paying attention to the Florentine court control over intellectual activity, focusing on the use of myth and rhetoric to pursue specific political aims.
My Ph.D. dissertation investigates the Portuguese succession 1578-1581, from the point of view of the Italian courts. The analysis of the Iberian events, outlined with apparent objectivity by the contemporary authors highlights critical aspects of the Italian situation and helps to identify the communication strategies addressed both to foreign and internal affairs of Italian states.
I am currently working on cultural and political links between Italy and Portugal in 16th and 17th century, on the use and manipulation of information in early modern Tuscany. I consider text typologies as primary evidences of communication strategies. I am editor of the section “Historical Journals” for SISEM website.