Team Members
Our team
Marco Gardini is Associate Professor at the University of Pavia and Principal Investigator of the project WAD (“Women of the African Diaspora: ‘Herstories’ beyond Numbers in Lombardy”). He earned his Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology in 2013 at the University of Milano-Bicocca in co-partnership with the University of Bayreuth. He has conducted ethnographic research in Togo (2006-2011), Madagascar (2013- present) and Italy (2018-present). His research interests include aging and migration, African slavery and post-slavery, stigma and forms of labour exploitation, land conflicts and banditry. He is the author of La Terra Contesa. Conflitti fondiari e lavoro agricolo in Togo (Edizioni Mimesis, 2017) and Anzianità e Invecchiamento in Africa e nella Diaspora. Prospettive Antropologiche (Carocci Editore, 2023).
Among his last publications: Gardini, M. 2022 (a) “The Chameleonic Nature of Freedom: Notes on the Concept of Fahafahana in the Highlands of Madagascar”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol 92, n. 2, pp. 230-248; Gardini, M. 2022 (b), “Networks of Solidarity among Former Marxist Activists in the bas quartiers of Antananarivo”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 48, n. 4, pp. 653-665.
He is member of the board of the Ph.D. in History at the University of Pavia, where he also teaches Political Anthropology (MA in African and Asian Studies) and Social and Cultural Anthropology (BA in Political and International Sciences).
AURORA MASSA
Aurora Massa is a social anthropologist working on mobility within and from the Horn of Africa. She has conducted ethnography in Ethiopia, Italy, Sweden and the UK, studying conditions of im/mobility, youth, transnational families, borders, temporality, foodways and home-making process.
She is also interested in research methodologies, particularly in contexts of structural violence. She was lecturer and researcher at the University of Naples L’Orientale and visiting professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Trento (ERC-HOMInG research project) and at the CNR-IRPPS.
She authored articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals, such as Anuac, JEMS and JRS. She wrote “Intrecci di frontiera” (CISU 2021) and co-authored “Ethnographies of home and mobility” (Routledge 2021). Beside her academic commitments, she was a consultant for the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the IOM and various international NGOs.
As a postdoctoral fellow at University of Pavia, she is now a member of the “Women of African Diaspora” research project.
SERENA SCARABELLO
Serena Scarabello is Post-doc Fellow at the University of Pavia within the project “Women of the African Diaspora: ‘Herstories’ beyond numbers in Lombardy” (WAD). She completed a Ph.D. in Social Sciences at the University of Padua (2016) and a Master Degree in Cultural Anthropology, Ethnology and Ethnolinguistic at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2009).
She has been visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam (NL) and visiting student (Erasmus mobility program) at the Department of Social Sciences, Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (RO). She conducted several ethnographic fieldworks, focusing on female migration trajectories, changing gender roles and formal/informal economic practices in Senegal and Romania, and on racialization processes, with also an intersectional perspective, among Afro-descendant youth in Italy.
She served as didactic coordinator of the ‘Master on Intercultural Studies’ of the University of Padua (Italy) and as trainer, group facilitator and research consultant for NGOs and Public Institutions. More recently, as Research Fellow of the INSigHT Project, coordinated by the SSIIM-UNESCO Chair of the IUAV University of Venice (Italy), she conducted an ethnographic observation of the anti-trafficking project of Veneto Region (North-East Italy), reflecting on the challenges of local social services in dealing with the evolving dynamics of human trafficking and labor/sexual exploitation of women from Nigeria to Italy.
In the WAD project, she is currently exploring life trajectories, reproductive pathways and mothering practices with women of different generations of the Ghanaian diaspora.
GIULIA CONSOLI
Giulia Consoli is a Post-doc Fellow at the Department of Social and Political Sciences (UNIPV) within the project “Women of the African Diaspora: ‘Herstories’ beyond numbers in Lombardy” (WAD).
In 2017 she earned a double master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Analysis of Mediterranean Societies (Master COSM) at the University of Turin (Italy) and the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University of Rabat (Morocco).
In 2022 she completed with honours a Ph.D. in Global Histories, Cultures and Politics at the University of Bologna. Thanks to mobility grants, she pursued her education also in Marmara University of Istanbul (2012, Turkey, Erasmus program) and at the University of Edinburgh (2021, UK, postgraduate visiting researcher).
Currently, she is also member of the “Laboratorio di Etno-Antropologia” (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) where she recently held the seminar “Minori Stranieri Non Accompagnati: Un’antropologia della parentela atipica”.
Her main research interests focus on childhood and adolescence, relatedness, domesticity and migration. She has ethnographic fieldwork research experience in Serbia, Morocco and Italy – where she engaged in research on the legal category of “unaccompanied foreign minor” (in Morocco and Italy) and on the institution of “volunteer guardianship” (in Italy). On the latter, she published Open Access “Genealogie Statali?” (article, Antropologia Pubblica 2021), “‘Tutori volontari di minori stranieri non accompagnati’: una questione di cittadinanza?” (book chapter, 2022) and Catene di cura (article, Antropologia 2023).
In the WAD project, she is conducting a research on life trajectories and reproductive/relatedness practices with women of the Moroccan diaspora.
Address List
- Corso S.da Nuova, 65, 27100 Pavia PV
- marco.gardini@unipv.it
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