Biography

I am a PhD candidate at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. The defence of my dissertation, titled ‘The Echoes of the Anglo-French Abolitionist Debate and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States (1750-1850)’,is scheduled for July 2016.
In my dissertation I analyse forms of slavery – in Palermo, Caserta, Naples, Rome, Livorno and Genoa – and the connections between the Anglo-French abolitionist debate and the debate in the Italian area. My contribution is focused on the contradiction between an abolitionist debate against the Atlantic slave trade and the persistence of cases of slavery in Italian cities.
My research interests focus on 18th and 19th century slavery studies but also on the history of minority groups, the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution. I have received a scholarship from the École Française de Rome and I am a member of EHESS-Mondes Américains.
During the year of the Postdoctoral Max Weber Programme, I would like to extend my PhD research to a study of the Neapolitan families, and broadly Italian families, implicated in the slave trade.