About

I obtained my Ph.D in Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, Italy. My main research interests are related to the study of cultures, identities and practices of political militantism, both of parties and social movements. In this area of investigation, a specific attention is devoted to symbolic gender orders and masculinities codes, understood as relevant dimensions in the re/production of political organizations. I am currently Marie Curie fellow at the Centre d’études européennes et de politique comparée of Sciences Po Paris with a project called ERRANT – Ethnography of Radical Right Across Nations and Territories. The research is an in-depth and comparative study of two leading actors of European populist radical right: the Italian Lega and the French Rassemblement National (RN). The project, organized around two in-depth qualitative case studies, analyses the dynamics of parties’ territorial anchorage at the forefront of their institutionalization, in two middle-sized, peripheral towns where they have already accessed the mainstream (high electoral scores, party in local government, cultural hegemony). It also sheds light on the internal life and fabric of the two parties, giving voice to the activists themselves in their everyday interactions, from rank and file to higher executives. Moreover, ERRANT analyses the local polarization between the parties’ networks and civil progressive counter-movements, with a specific focus on two explosive lines of conflict: ethnicity/immigration and gender/LGBT equality. With an experimental mix of immersion and comparison, ERRANT inaugurates a new methodological template that will be useful for future ethnographic works on the radical right. Beyond the two case studies, the research aims to produce new interpretative categories of partisanship, organization, political cultures of radical right parties. Among my publications: - with C. Peroni, E. Rapetti (2018), "One step up and two steps back? The Italian debate on secularization, heteronormativity and LGBTQ citizenship", Social Compass, 65 (5), 591-607. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0037768618800750 - with B.Poggio (2018), New faces of populism: The Italian ‘anti-gender’ mobilization, in U. Kovala, R. Palonen, T. Saresma, M. Ruotsalanien (Eds.), Populism on the loose, Jyväskylä, Jyväskylän yliopisto, pp. 119-142. https://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/57477/978-951-39-7401-5.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y#page=120 - (2019) "De la Ligue du Nord à la nouvelle Ligue. Nationalisme, nativisme et souverainisme", Tumultes, 2 (53), 175-190. https://www.cairn.info/revue-tumultes-2019-2-page-175.htmhttps://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/57477/978-951-39-7401-5.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y#page=120

Research Interests

Civil Society, Comparative Politics, Ethnic Conflict, Extremism, Gender, Nationalism, Political Methodology, Political Participation, Populism, Regionalism, Constructivism, Feminism, Identity, Immigration, Party Members, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Qualitative, Euroscepticism, Mobilisation, Activism, LGBTQI, Refugee

Current/Upcoming Events

Standing Groups and Research Networks

• Extremism and Democracy
• Gender and Politics
• Affective Polarization