Research interests
Rural history, history of quantification, history of economic thought, economic history
Education
01/07/2008 – 30/06/2012 Ph.D., Thesis’ title: Knowing to Transform: three ways for agricultural economists to observe Italy 1900-1940; Faculty of Law, Economics and Business, Utrecht Universiteit, The Netherlands. Date of defence: 28.02.2013
Supervisors: Prof. Mary Morgan, Prof. Janneke Plantinga, co-supervisor: Prof. Harro Maas
01/09/2007 – 30.06.2008 M.Sc. in Economics, CORIPE, Piemonte, Italy, 9.2007-6.2008, with scholarship of CORIPE.
01/10/2001 – 15/07/2008 Diploma (20/20), Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa; from 2001 to 2006 studies were fully funded by a competitive scholarship of the Scuola Normale Superiore.
01/10/2004 – 30/05/2007 Laurea magistrale in Philosophy (110/110 cum laude), Università di Pisa.
Current and future positions
01/11/2025 – open ended Associate professor in history of economic thought, Department of Political Sciences, University of Bologna
01/02/2024 – open ended Associate professor in agricultural history, Institute for social and economic history, University of Vienna (on leave)
Research project: PI ERC Starting Grant “DataRev”: the team includes one post-doc, two phd students, two research assistants, one administrator.
Previous positions
09/2021 – 31/01/2024 Assistant professor in agricultural history (fast tenure-track), Institute for social and economic history, University of Vienna
01/09/2019-30/08/2021 Marie Skłodowska Curie Action Fellow at the Department of Management, University of Venice, Italy.
01/10/2018-30/08/2020 Fellow of the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Social Sciences.
01/10/2016-30/09/2018 Senior SNF Researcher at University of Lausanne in project IZLRZ1-163856/1 directed by François Allisson on the Swiss-Russian economist Nikolaj Sieber.
25/4-30/9/2016 Post-doctoral researcher at the Paris School of Economics, project on « Systemic Risk in the 1930s” (SYSRI-30) led by Prof. Angelo Riva, financed by the French Nation Research Agency ANR.
01/09/2014-30/04/2015 post-doctoral Fellow at the Center for the History of Political Economy of Duke University.
01/09/2013-30/08.2014 Yale University Department of Political Science, post-doctoral Fellow on project entitled ‘Peasant farms and agricultural policies: the history of a paradigm of response’
01/07/2008-28/02/2011 Trainee Research Assistant University of Amsterdam and
01/03/2011-30/08/2012 at Utrecht University for NWO project on Observation in economics VIDI-grant 276-53-004
Grants, fellowships and awards
08.01-08.02.2026 Visiting Professor at EHESS, CRH
2021 – 2026 ERC Starting Grant “Leading the first data revolution in European agriculture: farm accountancy data and their impact 1870-1945” (1.5 million euros).
2018 – 2019 Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellowship, Department of Management/ University of Venice/ Italy “Farm Accountancy Data as a Source for the History of European Agriculture” (171.000 euros).
2013 – 2014 Rubicon Grant of the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research, with the title: ‘Peasant farms and agricultural policies: the history of a paradigm of response’, project number 446-12-017, The Netherlands (71.000 euros).
Supervision
I am currently supervising three PhD students
Languages
Italian: native; English, French: C2; German: C1; Russian: C1; Dutch A2.
Services to the profession
I have acted as referee for the following journals: Storia Economica, Agricultural History Review, Agricultural History, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Il pensiero economico italiano, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Science in context, Journal of World History.
I am co-founder of the HelvHet mailing list and of the VenHist mailing list
Networks and collaborations
I am associated researcher at the Institut d’Histoire Economique Paul Bairoch at Université de Genève, member of the Narrative Science network, and member of the CNRS International Research Network 2022 Coping with variety: resource-use and specialization in rural change.
