As of 1st January 2027 I will be on long-term leave from the University of Bologna to join the University of Santiago de Compostela as Full Professor where I will co-lead as cPI my new ERC Synergy project PLANETARY EEL.
I will be teaching my last courses at Unibo in the autumn 2026 and do not accept any new requests for supervision, visiting fellowships or internship tutoring at Unibo. I do however welcome enquiries from new prospective students and early-career scholars to join me at the University of Santiago de Compostela, either as part of the PLANETARY EEL project, or to work, for example - but not limited to, - on medical and veterinary anthropology, multispecies ethnography, migration & borderlands, gender and public health, kinship and reproduction, wetlands, maritime and coastal ecosystems. Please use my Unibo email address for now.
I am a medical and veterinary anthropologist, currently Associate Professor at Unibo, where I have taught and led research on migration, ethics and methods, more-than-human health and the anthropology of water. I have recently been awarded an ERC Synergy grant as cPI and will soon transfer with my grant to the University of Santiago de Compostela where I will lead research on planetary anthropology.
My long-standing research achievements centre around the study of human and nonhuman kinship and reproduction, with a particular focus on relations and encounters of care, within medical institutions and beyond. In my work, I have successfully proposed the concept of nurture to describe analytically processes of care which are intrinsically asymmetric although they do not appear to be so at first. I have studied these processes in Lowland South America, by documenting historically and anthropologically first contacts, medical missions, and the birth of the clinic in tropical Amazonian borderlands. I have also studied relations of care (at the beginning and end of life) within hospitals and emergency NGO clinics in European borderlands in the Mediterranean and in Overseas France. I have also successfully raised large grants. I was PI of an ERC-funded project entitled EU Border Care (2015-21) which examined migration, maternity care and reproductive health in European borderlands. Besides scientific outputs such as books, articles and blogposts, I also had the opportunity to disseminate my ERC-funded research to a wider audience through interviews, online articles and videos, as well as art initiatives such as graphic novels and exhibitions. Together with Marc Brightman (University of Bologna) and Naor Ben-Yehoyada (Columbia University) I was co-investigator on a collaborative project which studies migrant death, mourning and memorialisation in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, ‘Ecologies of Remembrance: The Moral Afterlives of Migrant Human Remains Along the Central Mediterranean Route’ (2018-21). Since 2020, I have been teaching and supervising research on the anthropology of nature and the Anthropocene; I am co-investigator of a PRIN interdisciplinary project on legal personhood for nonhumans, entitled: ‘Law of nature and human ecosystem approach: modelling a transcultural eco-legal framework’ (LUMEN). My contribution focuses on Indigenous science, kinship and care for nonhumans. Since 2023, I am an active member of an interdisciplinary research network on Infectious Disease Control (IDC) and cross-border mobilities led by the Public Health Department of the University of Maastricht. Our network is submitting an application for a MSCA Doctoral Network for which I am Scientist-in-Charge as expert on medical anthropology and migration.
Education & Key Qualifications
2003-07 PhD Social Anthropology, Trinity College and Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. First Pass Without Corrections.
2002-03 MPhil Social Anthropological Research, Trinity College and Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
2000-01 MSc Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Wolfson College and Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Awarded ‘Distinction’.
1998-99 Maitrise History, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Awarded ‘Mention Très Bien’.
Current Position
2020- Associate Professor of Anthropology (Tenured), Dep. of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna.
Previous Positions
2015-20 Part-Time Professor, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute.
2012-15 Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford University.
2008-15 Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford University.
2008-12 British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford University.
2007-08 Ville de Paris Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale, Collège de France - EHESS, Paris.
2007 Research Fellow, Epidemiology and Population Health Department, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,
RESEARCH ACHIEVEMENTS AND PEER RECOGNITION
10 Selected Publications (4 books, 1 special journal edition, 4 articles and 1 book chapter)
- (2022) Nurturing the Other: First Contacts and the Making of Christian Bodies in Amazonia. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Publishers. This monograph is a historical ethnography on first contacts and missionisation among the Trio, Wayana and Akuriyo of Suriname and French Guiana, which builds upon my long-term field research among Indigenous communities and uses original archival research. It demonstrates the central role played by distinct notions of nurture, domestication and human and nonhuman personhood for Indigenous and evangelical Christian missionary ontologies during first contact encounters with isolated Akuriyo people, and the consequences of sustained contact and attempts at integration through processes understood as caring forms of domestication over subsequent decades.
- (2021) Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean: Encounters with Alterity in Birth and Death. Co-editor with Marc Brightman. Palgrave MacMillan. This book brings together contributions which revisit the classic theme of hospitality to interpret migrant reception during a period of political crisis over migration. Bringing together contributions from my ERC project, EU BORDER CARE, the book shows how reproductive care in the context of migrant maternity in EU borderlands can be better understood in terms of nurture and hospitality. The book also investigates how ritual and memorialisation are used by communities to process the death of strangers. The theme of care and nurture is employed here in a radically different setting and proves adequate to shedding new light upon the phenomenon.
- (2016) Ownership and Nurture: Studies in Native Amazonian Property Relations. Co-editor with Marc Brightman & Carlos Fausto. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Publishers. This book brings together contributions from different parts of the Amazon region to explore comparatively the processual nature of Indigenous Amazonian notions of property and ownership. It shows that nurture and domestication are central to the generation of property relations, and that the ownership of persons, whether human or nonhuman, is at least, if not more important than the ownership of things.
- (2012) Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals and Non-humans in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. Co-editor with Marc Brightman & Olga Ulturgasheva. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Publishers. This edited volume explores animism and human-animal, human-plant and human-spirit relations comparatively across the Amazonian and Siberian regions. It makes a significant contribution to the field of animism. Through the detailed ethnographic chapters it anticipates later work across anthropology and other disciplines in multispecies studies.
- (2007) Rethinking the ‘Frontier’ in Amazonia and Siberia: Extractive Economies, Indigenous Politics and Social Transformations. Co-editor with Marc Brightman & Olga Ulturgasheva. Special edition of Cambridge Anthropology 26(2). This co-edited special edition examines comparatively resource extractivism and Indigenous politics in Lowland South America and Siberia. This is the first volume dedicated to an ongoing collaborative exchange between Marc Brightman, myself and ERC Synergy PI Olga Ulturgasheva.
- (2024) ‘Planning and Environmental Disaster in the Ravenna Coastal Plain’, co-authored with Marc Brightman, Cultural Anthropology Fieldsights. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/planning-and-environmental-disaster-in-the-ravenna-coastal-plain . This article examines climate change and environmental disaster in the Po Delta area from a multispecies perspective; it is directly relevant to PLANETARY EEL for its focus on amphibious landscape and historic colonisation of wetlands; by studying ethnographically post-disaster fragmentation and reconstruction initiatives at various scales of governance, it highlights the challenges to environmental justice and social equity in top-town reconstruction governance.
- (2020) ‘Birthing Alone: Pregnancy and Maternity Care in the Shadow of COVID-19 in Italy’, co-authored with Chiara Quagliariello, Medical Anthropology Quarterly: http://medanthroquarterly.org/2020/06/19 /birthing-alone-pregnancy-and-maternity-care-in-the-shadow-of-covid-19-in-italy/ [http://medanthroquarterly.org/2020/06/19%20/birthing-alone-pregnancy-and-maternity-care-in-the-shadow-of-covid-19-in-italy/] . This article, based on remote ethnographic field research carried out during the first lockdown in Italy in 2020, analyses the radical transformation of maternity care to both documented and undocumented pregnant patients in Italy as a result of the state of emergency brought by the first Covid wave in the country. It showcases the rapid response I was able to lead to adapt and reorient my ERC project in the midst of the pandemic, developing innovative ethnographic research methods using digital tools.
- (2019) ‘Temporalities of Emergency: Migrant Pregnancy and Healthcare Networks in Southern European Borderlands’, co-authored with Cynthia Malakasis, Chiara Quagliariello & Nina Sahraoui, Social Science and Medicine 222: 11-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.12.022 . One of the core outputs of my EU Border Care project, this article analyses sexual and reproductive care delivery in European borderlands from the perspective of both healthcare staff and pregnant patients, with a focus on the structural and systemic challenges experienced by public services under the strain of economic austerity, infrastructural neglect and high patients inflows.
- (2019) ‘Comparison and Difference: Kinship, Nurture and Personhood in Amazonia and the Mediterranean’, co-authored with Marc Brightman, in Geremia Cometti, Pierre Le Roux, Tiziana Manicone et Natassja Martin (eds) Au seuil de la forêt: Hommage à Philippe Descola, l’anthropologue de la nature. Mirebeau-sur-Bèze: Tautem Éditions, pp. 379-390. This chapter, which Marc Brightman and I were invited to write, argues for the analytic importance of comparison in anthropology. By focusing on nurture, it is directly relevant to PLANETARY EEL.
- (2018) ‘Shifting Vulnerabilities: Gender and Reproductive Care on the Migrant Trail to Europe’, co-authored with Cynthia Malakasis, Chiara Quagliariello & Nina Sahraoui, Comparative Migration Studies 6 (23), https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-018-0089-z . Based on long-term comparative ethnographic research in 4 EU external borderlands clinics in Italy, Spain and Greece, this article critically proposes the concept of vulnerability as an intersubjective quality which shifts and changes dynamically in migrant healthcare contexts, according to how patients and care givers define it and use it. This article was based on research I led as part of my EU Border Care project.
Prizes, Awards and competitively awarded Grants
2024-2025 Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) Research Grant
2018-2021 Wenner-Gren Foundation Research Grant
2016-2018 ERCcOMICS Competition for EU Border Care Award
2015-2020 European Research Council Starting Grant
2012-2015 Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship at Oxford University
2011-2014 John Fell OUP Small Research Grant, Oxford University
2008-2015 Wolfson College Research Fellowship
2008-2012 British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford University
2007-2008 Ville de Paris Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Collège de France-EHESS, Paris
Invited talks, guest speaker, seminars (selection since 2022)
(March 2024): Invited Keynote, ‘Infrastructures de la négligence: ‘Border works’, genre et exceptionnalisme dans la gouvernance reproductive aux périphéries de l'Europe’, Conférence ‘Migrations et Diversité Culturelle’, Université Catholique de Louvain.
(March 2024): Invited speaker, ‘Sexual and Reproductive Care in the EU’s Maritime Borderlands: Navigating the Care-Control Nexus in Places of Infrastructural Neglect’, Second International Interdisciplinary Workshop on Cross-Border Infectious Disease Control, Maastricht University.
(Oct. 2023) ‘Brackish: Towards a Methodology for the Co-production of Ethnographic, Legal and Design Knowledge for the Pluriverse’, co-authored with Marc Brightman, Stanislav Roudavski & Margaret Young, Architectural Humanities Research Association International Conference, University of Portsmouth.
(Aug. 2023) ‘Feral Coasts: Thinking about Coastal Biodiversity Restoration through Indigenous South American Modes of Appropriation and Care’, co-authored with Marc Brightman, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.
(May 2023) ‘Infrastructures of Neglect: Border Works, Gender and Exceptionalism in Reproductive Governance on Europe’s Periphery’, Journée d’études Actualités de l’anthropologie de l’Europe, ENS-PSL, Paris.
(Feb. 2023) ‘Infrastructures of Neglect: Border Works, Gender and Exceptionalism in Reproductive Governance on Europe’s Periphery’, Medical Anthropology Europe Seminar Series, EASA.
(Dec. 2022) ‘Infrastructures of Neglect: Border Works, Gender and Exceptionalism in Reproductive Governance on Europe’s Periphery’, COMPAS Seminar Series, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford.
(June 2022) Invited speaker at roundtable ‘L’Europe face aux épreuves: épidémies, guerres, réfugiés’, Event entitled: L’Europe des savoirs, Centre d’études européennes, École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
(Apr. 2022) ‘Ecologies of Remembrance: Situating the Afterlives of Migrant Dead at Sea in Italy (1997-2019)’, Medical Anthropology Seminar, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Positions of Trust
2019-2023 Core Member of the Medical Humanities Interview Committee, Wellcome Trust.
2018-2022 Member of the Jury and Interview Panel of the Eugène Fleischman Fellowship, Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative, Université de Paris X Nanterre
Since 2017 Expert Reviewer for the European Research Council (ERC).
2016-2023 Expert Reviewer and Interview Committee Member for the Wellcome Trust (UK).
Peer Reviewer for Social Science and Humanities journals and publishers in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese such as (not exhaustive): American Journal of Sociology, Anthropology & Medicine, Berghahn, BMC Health Services Research, BRILL, Bulletin of Latin American Research, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Hunter-Gatherer Research, Journal de la Société des Américanistes, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Social Science and Medicine, Regions and Cohesion, Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Professional Memberships: I am Associate Member of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School, Member of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, SALSA-Tipitì, Member of Imiscoe (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe), Member of the Société d’Ethnologie, Université de Paris X Nanterre, Member of the American Anthropological Association and Member of the Royal Anthropological Society.
Institutional responsibilities: I am co-director of the Laboratory of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bologna, which I co-founded in 2021 with Marc Brightman. Since starting my tenured position at Unibo, I have also had to fulfil a series of institutional duties, including Admissions officer for Postgraduate Studies, Member of the Committee for Internationalisation of my department, Coordinator of the Anthropology track for both undergraduate and graduate degrees, Member of the Quality Assurance Committee of the postgraduate degree in Human Rights and International Cooperation (I-CONTACT) and member of the Doctoral College.
Art & Dissemination: I was selected by ERCcOMICS in 2016 to disseminate EU Border Care’s work through comics, leading to the successful creation of the Webcomic Expecting by artist Sandrine Martin, with whom I collaborated on a longer graphic novel centred on EU Border care’s research. The graphic novel Chez toi was published in 2021 by Casterman and was later published in Italian as A casa by Tunué (2021). The release of the comic in both countries led to a series of high-profile interviews in both mainstream media (France Culture, RFI, France 2, La Repubblica etc.) and presentation of my ERC project at international comics festivals across Europe (Angoulême, Luxembourg, Bologna, etc.). I have also organised exhibitions to disseminate my research. For example: (1) Several photo exhibitions for EU Border Care in Italy (EUI, Florence) and Belgium (La Tricoterie & ULB, Brussels); (2) Permanent South America Display at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Teaching and Mentoring: All my postdoctoral mentees have secured full-time employment at the end of their contract, including three Marie Curie Intra-European (2) and Global (1) Fellows. I am currently supervisor of 2 Marie Curie Global Fellows, whose application I supported were both evaluated at 100%. I also have an excellent track-record in nurturing postgraduate students’ career progression into fully funded PhD programmes in the EU and North America.
Field Experience: I have carried out extensive long-term field research in Suriname and French Guiana since 2002, in Italy since 2015 and Japan since 2025, and shorter-term field research in Albania, Belize, Burkina Faso, Guyana, Vietnam and Taiwan. I have managed a team carrying out fieldwork in Greece, Italy, France (including Overseas France: French Guiana & Mayotte) and Spain. My field experience has included ethnography of Indigenous Carib techniques of the body and notions of personhood, Ravenna port and dockers’ union, maternal and neonatal health in migration, marine conservation and invasive species, forensic science, forensic oceanography, unidentified death and migrant burials in Italy and Albania, hospitals, migrant reception centres and public health.
Languages: Italian (native speaker); French (native speaker); English (fluent working language); Spanish, Portuguese, German (fluent); Tarëno (Trio) (Indigenous Carib language, working knowledge); Romagnolo (beginner); Japanese (beginner).
Career breaks, unconventional career paths and major life events
I went on official maternity leave following the birth of my 2 children, from Nov. 2008 - May 2009 (6 months) and from Sept. 2012 - June 2013 (9 months).
