I’m currently a research fellow at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (ISMED), part of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), and a PhD candidate at the Universities of Turin and Florence. I’m a late modern historian, focusing on urban and industrial environmental history. My main research topic has been the connection between deindustrialisation and environmental issues, policies and claim-making in the late XX and the XXI century. I’ve focused my studies on the city of Naples and I’ve written a book in English, titled The Swamp of East Naples (The White Horse Press, 2021) on its environmental history. I’m also an associate editor for the international journal Global Environment and the editor-in-chief for the Italian Society for Environmental History (SISAM).
Project Statement
I intend to study the networks of underground economies in Mediterranean suburban areas, especially those involved in a deindustrialisation process. I will analyse these processes through comparative case studies to be found in the peripheries of Mediterranean cities. A historical perspective will support and be supported by sociological analysis. The main objective is to retrace the correlations between underground economies networks, patterns of consumption and suburban ecosystemic transformations. I intend to follow these networks’ circuits while retracing the careers of smugglers, the production and circulation of goods and the strategies for waste disposal. I am trying to focus on areas involved in deindustrialisation processes: I think that the production, distribution, consumption and disposal of illegal goods could be socially linked to the effects of deindustrialisation and materially eased by the presence of brownfields and abandoned industrial activities.
