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Giorgio Riello

Full-time Professor

Department of History

Director of Research

Department of History

Contact info

[email protected]

[+39] 055 4686 594

Office

Villa Salviati- Castle, SACA209

Administrative contact

Fabrizio Borchi

Working languages

Italian, English

Curriculum vitae

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Giorgio Riello

Full-time Professor

Director of Research

Department of History

Biography

Professor of Early Modern Global History.

Giorgio Riello is Chair of Early Modern Global History. He joined the Department of History and Civilization in 2019 moving from the University of Warwick where he was Professor of Global History and Culture. At Warwick he was the Director of the Institute of Advanced Study. Giorgio has published extensively on the economic and material culture history of trade and consumption in early modern Asia and Europe. He is the author of Back In Fashion: Western Fashion since the Middle Ages (Yale UP, 2020); Luxury: A Rich History (Oxford UP 2016, co-authored with P. McNeil); Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (Cambridge UP 2013, Pb 2015; winner of the World History Association Bentley Prize 2014); La Moda (Laterza, 2012; 2nd ed. 2021); and A Foot in the Past (Oxford UP, 2006). He has co-edited more than a dozen books and special issues of journals. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize and he was the coordinator of the Leverhulme-funded 'The Luxury Network'.

He is currently co-writing a book (with Dagmar Schaefer, Max Planck Institute, Berlin) entitled 'Cultures of Innovation: Silk in Pre-Modern Eurasia', and collaborating with colleagues at Stanford, Syracuse and Warwick on a project entitled ‘Carletti’s World: An Early Modern Global Voyage’. He is the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant for the project ‘CAPASIA. The Asian Origins of Global Capitalism: The European Factories of the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800’ considering the early modern system of trade of the Indian Ocean and the rise of global capitalism.

Additional information

  • Chair of Early Modern Global History, European University Institute, Florence, 2019-present
  • Director of Warwick in Venice, 2018-19
  • Chair of the Pasold Research Fund, 2016-19
  • Director of the Warwick Institute of Advanced Study, 2014-17
  • Professor, Warwick University, 2011-present
  • Assistant and Associate Professor, Warwick University, 2007-2011
  • Research Officer, London School of Economics, 2004-2006
  • Lecturer, Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art, 2003-2004
  • Ph.D in History, University College London, 2002
  • Laurea in Economia Aziendale, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, 1998

  • 2019. Visiting scholar, EHESS, Paris.
  • 2017-18. Professorial Visiting Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
  • 2016. Iris Foundation Award for contribution to the Decorative Arts and Material Culture
  • 2014. World History Association Bentley Book Prize for Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (CUP 2013).
  • 2012. Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship , European University Institute
  • 2010-11. Stanford Humanieties Center Fellow
  • 2010. ISL-HCA Australian Academy of the Humanities Fellowship, 2010
  • 2009. Newcomen Article Prize Winner 2009 for the article 'Strategies and Boundaries'
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