2021 Edition Participants

Maria Teresa Annarumma

Independent Curator and Producer

Maria Teresa Annarumma, after a Master’s Degree and a Post Graduate School in Law at
University Federico II in Naples (I), and then working as a lawyer for ten years, left to set up an
art production group focused on the development of engaged social projects, working for a decade
with the artist Craigie Horsfield in the “Napoli Conversation project”.
She was curatorial fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program (NY/2013-2014) and wrote
the essay “Public Space and the Common,” published in “Common Spaces,” edited by the Whitney
Museum before becoming guest researcher at the MacBa (2015, Barcelona, E).
She’s now curator for the contemporary program at “Complesso Monumentale Purgatorio ad Arco”
in Naples (I) and continues to work with artists, curators and engaged theorists in Italy, Spain and
in the US, as an independent curator and producer. She writes for artist catalogues and arts
journals. Her first book is about the origins and evolution of social projects in Contemporary Art.

Parker Bach

Graduate student, M.A. in Media, Culture and Technology, University of Virginia

Parker Bach is from Cincinnati, Ohio, and recently graduated as part of the first M.A. cohort in media, culture and technology at the University of Virginia, where he also received his bachelor’s degree in media studies. Parker has researched a variety of topics, including college campus emergency communication technologies, communication infrastructure rollout policy and news coverage of the recent Paycheck Protection Program. His master’s research focused on the Christian-conservative, online news satire of The Babylon Bee, with attention to its adaption of the carnivalesque to the conservative countersphere and its dependence on and conflict with social media platforms. As a rising doctoral student at UNC, Parker hopes to continue using political humor and contestations over humor as a window into such topics as the digitally mediated public sphere, platform governance, and online speech and censorship

Edoardo Biscossi

PhD candidate at the University of Naples "L’Orientale"

I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Naples L’Orientale, and was previously a MA student in Digital Media & Critical Computing at Goldsmiths University of London. The research project I am working on looks at the relations between bodies, machines and information, within the planetary computational infrastructures of what has been called ‘platform’ or ‘gig’ economy, focusing specifically on the case of delivery platforms. It analyses how the bodies of the labour-power are integrated within the productive assemblages of this diffused industrial machine, enmeshed trough the material and abstract spaces of technological interfaces. It aims to understand labour and socio- economic relations, in relation to the more fundamental relations of bodies with technical ensembles, and to the co-existence and co-operation of human workers and machine intelligence. Within this framework, I also try to look at the urban space through software infrastructures, as a space of logistics, labour, consumption, objectification, and data circulation.

Maria Giulia Boccalatte

Graduate student, Historical and Oriental Studies - Curriculum "Global Cultures", University of Bologna

In 2016 Maria Giulia Boccalatte received her Bachelor degree in Philosophy at the University of Bologna. Her thesis in Aesthetics “L’esperienza estetica come atto di libertà. La riflessione sull’arte in Herbert Marcuse”, focused on Marcuse’s criticism on the capitalist society from a Eurocentric perspective. She graduated in 2020 in Historical and Oriental Studies Curriculum Global Cultures at the University of Bologna. She wrote her dissertation, under the supervision of professor Raffaele Laudani, in Atlantic and Global History of Modern Political Concepts, titled “Black Subjectivity and Historical Imagination: Black Identities in the Era of Globalization” focusing on the black identity and black struggles for freedom to advance a critique of globalization as the last stage of capitalism. She spent the second year at the University of Warwick under the Erasmus + study program where she carried out part of her research. She is currently working on her PhD research project stemming out of her dissertation.

Jacopo Bonasera

Phd student in History, Cultures and Global Politics, University of Bologna

I graduated in Historical Sciences at the University of Bologna in November 2017 discussing a thesis entitled «Melancholy, Prophetism, Imagination. Thomas Hobbes and the Order of Modern Political Discourse». This work led me to writing an article on the same topic published by «Filosofia Politica» in 2019. My academic experience continues now as a Phd student in History, Cultures and Global Politics at the University of Bologna. My current doctoral research, supervised by Professor Paola Rudan, is concerned with the political and social thought of Thomas Robert Malthus. More specifically, I’m focusing on the way in which the author reshapes some key concepts of modern political thought (population, society, government, discipline, constitution) in order to develop a political answer to the crisis subsequent to the Atlantic Revolutions of late 18th century.

Nicolaas Buitendag

Post-doctoral Fellow, North-West University, South Africa

Believing that current global questions ask for broad structural responses, Dr. Nico Buitendag conducts transdisciplinary theoretical research that bridges law, politics, sociology, historiography and philosophy. Deeply influenced by autopoietic systems theory, his work attempts to project the theory further along its radical and anti-hierarchical horizon.
This has led to publications connecting theory to practical cases such as political hate-speech trials, sanctioned police violence at Marikana, the death of Steve Biko at the hands of the state, and border conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has also resulted in the translation into English of several works of Niklas Luhmann, late pioneer of autopoietic systems theory, from German.
Currently Dr. Buitendag is distilling his doctoral work into a monograph (forthcoming from Aosis Publishing, 2022) which engages with the structural and systemic complicity of law, politics and science in colonial projects.

Rahime Cokay Nebioglu

Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar, Literature Program, Duke University

Rahime Cokay Nebioglu holds her PhD from Middle East Technical University. She has spent a year of her doctoral studies as a Fulbright scholar in the Literature Program at Duke, and she is currently conducting her postdoctoral research on "The Microfascistic Turn in the Post-Postmodern Era" in the same program at Duke. She is the author of Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Dystopia. Her research interests include utopian studies, continental philosophy, modernism(s), affect studies, comparative literature, and adaptation studies. 

Lucas da Silva Lopes

Ph.D. student in Romance Studies, Duke University

I am a second-year Ph.D. student in Romance Studies at Duke University. I received my B.A. in Portuguese from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp, Brazil) and my M.A. in Literary Theory and Criticism also from Unicamp. In 2019, I was a Visiting Research fellow in the Department of English at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada through a scholarship from the Emerging Leaders of the Americas program. I have previously specialized in William Faulkner’s portrayal of the American South, with increasing exploration of linkages to the Global South. From 2016 to 2018, I served as a secretary to ANPOLL (Brazil’s National Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Languages, Literature, and Linguistics). My current research interests include Modernism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and Latin American intellectual history.

Giulia dos Prazeres Costa

Coordinator of International Justice and Memory and Truth, Secretariat of State for Social Development and Human Rights, Rio de Janeiro/ Erasmus Mundus Master’s Student in Human Rights Policy and Practice (EMHRPP)

Giulia dos Prazeres Costa works in the State Government of Rio de Janeiro as Coordinator of International Justice and Memory and Truth at the Secretariat of State for Social Development and Human Rights. Master’s student (cohort 2021-2023) with full scholarship of the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Programme in Human Rights Policy and Practice (EMHRPP) at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), the University of Deusto (Spain), the University of Roehampton (UK), and the Arctic University of Norway (Norway). Also, she is the Programme Representative of the EMHRPP at the Erasmus Mundus Association.
Giulia graduated in Law with an emphasis in State and Society and complementary training in Trade and International Business at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She took part in an academic exchange with a full scholarship at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and in the EU-South America Global Governance at the FGV Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence.

Ludovica Fales

Documentary director, artist and academic/ PhD in Audiovisual Studies

Ludovica Fales is a documentary director, artist and academic. Graduated in Philosophy between Italy and Germany and 
subsequently graduated in documentary cinema at the National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom, Ludovica holds an 
international PhD in Audiovisual Studies with a thesis on participative and interactive collective narrative. Lecturing in documentary theory and practice, experimental 
and interactive film at University College London since 2015, Ludovica developed a dual identity as director and academic. This led her to be 
interested in the political exploration of personal and collective memory, also through use of archival material and new media. Her documentary 
films won awards and have been shown in festivals and cinemas internationally. Ludovica is currently working on her hybrid feature film""Lala"". 
Ludovica, who also has experience as a producer and production assistant for documentaries for BBC and Al Jazeera, she has been 
collaborating for years with the international circuit of documentary festivals, as a programmer and teacher. She collaborated with DeriveApprodi journal and now collaborates with OperaViva magazine.

Masha Hassan

Graduate student in "Global Cultures", University of Bologna

I am an Indian student who has graduated in a Masters in Global Cultures at the University of Bologna, Italy. Focusing on colonial and post-colonial studies, my interest lies in understanding identity constructions at the margins, the ‘liminal identities’ and also tracing transnational languages of solidarity in resistance movements. I am currently working at the Home Office in Bologna as an interpreter for Political asylum seekers, translating from Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi to Italian and I have also volunteered as a translator at the French Italian borders like Ventimiglia and Oulx. I occasionally write for the Times of India, Speaking Tree column.

Umer Jan

Ph.D. student at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster

After finishing my master’s degree in International Relations from Islamic University of Kashmir, I joined the University of Westminster for an M.Phil./Ph.D. degree in Politics, as a Global Challenges Research scholar. My research focuses on the functioning of civil bureaucracies in India-controlled Kashmir, institutions that have been strategically crafted to further enable Indian state’s heavily contested military rule in the region. For my Ph.D. research, I draw from a wide-ranging source of critical theory, from Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony to Arturo Escobar’s post-development theory. Another trajectory of my ongoing research focuses on India’s colonial necropolitics and political resistance in Kashmir. In the latter, I am interested in how people in Kashmir have adopted death as a form of resistance (necro-resistance) and how this adoption transforms the nature of mourning, memory, and social milieu as a whole. I am also a freelance journalist writing for Jacobin, Aljazeera, LA Review of Books and elsewhere.              

Marcela Lins

Ph.D. candidate in Communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais

Marcela is a Ph.D candidate in Communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She holds a Master’s degree in Communication at the Federal University of Pernambuco. Her current project investigates three major health crises that occurred in Brazil: the outbreak of yellow fever in the 1850s; the Spanish flu crisis, which spread throughout the country in 1918; and the 2020 pandemic caused by the new coronavirus. The articulation between the three events is carried out through an archaeological and genealogical perspective, which seeks to understand what are the regimes of power-knowledge that are sustained in the voices that manage public policies over an expanded temporality.

Valentina Marconi

Ph.D. student in Global Studies, University of Urbino (Italy)

Valentina Marconi’s work examines policies and practices of border violence across the European Union. In her multi-sited analysis, she looks at different manifestations of border violence and the forms of individual and collective resistance they entail. As part of her research, she did fieldwork in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla and carried out both in-person and online interviews to collect accounts on illegalised practices of border crossing along the main migratory routes leading to the EU territory. Currently, Valentina is a PhD student in Global Studies at the University of Urbino (Italy) and holds a MSc in Arab world studies from Durham University (UK). Before starting her doctoral studies, she co-authored two documentaries on migration: ‘Barcelona: ready to welcome?’ and ‘Violent borders, an investigative documentary on the Balkan route’.

Kiyomi Ren Mino

MA student in Philosophy at the Freie Universität, Berlin

Kiyomi Ren Mino completed their BA in philosophy at the New School in New York and is currently a MA student in philosophy at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Their current research interests include critical theory, racialization and health, and theories of social and political movements and their ensuing cultural, material and networked transformations.

Francesca Nicolodi

Student in Ethics and Politics, Bard College Berlin

My name is Francesca Nicolodi and I am a student of Bard College Berlin, majoring in ethics and politics. I am a 21 year old Italian, who grew up in France and in the United Kingdom. At the moment, I am a member of the CEU Roma Student Association, which is involved in raising awareness of Romani struggles in the EU. 

Alessandro Peregalli

PhD in Latin American Studies, Departamento de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

Alessandro Peregalli is a PhD doctor in Latin American Studies for the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He has a bachelor degree in Economic History in the Università degli Studi di Milano and a master in World History in the Università di Bologna. He investigated logistics infrastructure and corridors in Latina America, focusing on the Initiative for the Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA). His main interests are Critical Logistics Studies, Latin American critical thinking, Latin American contemporary history, extractivism and geography of territorial conflicts. He is member of CLACSO's working group “Territorios en disputa y r-existencia” and of the Laboratório de Estudos de Movimentos Sociais e Territorialidades (LEMTO) of the Universidade Federal Fluminense of Niterói, Brazil. He wrote for several review and collective books among Mexico, Brazil, Spain, UK and Italy. He currently lives in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Laura Raccanelli

Graduate student in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin

Laura Raccanelli is a graduate student in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin. She holds a bachelor in Anthropology, Religion and Oriental Studies at the University of Bologna. Her master thesis research was based on an urban ethnography of an highly stigmatized peripheral neighborhood of the city of Turin. Her main research interests are in critical urban studies and ethnographic methods, center-periphery dialectic, territorial stigmatization, segregation and structural inequality in the western city. She is currently focusing on the study of anthropology of memory and collective representation of identity and belonging in the territories of the exclusion, related to the production of visibility or invisibility of lives exposed to the margin.

Davide Rizzardi

Master's student in International Economic Relations, University of Buenos Aires

Davide Rizzardi - Master student in International Economic Relations at the University of Buenos Aires; Bachelor’s degree in International Development and Cooperation at the University of Bologna.
I’m an Italian student, researcher and musician. My research focuses on unevenness of capitalist development thought as a unified phenomenon. My approach tries to combine the economic perspective with the ecological and cognitive ones in order to overcome the fictious separations that divide humans and nature, mind and body, discourse and matter. In particular, I’m interested in understanding the condition of the most vulnerable territories and peoples. Besides my academic activity, I investigate the otherness with my artistic project unPluriverso. This pluriverse, in fact, is what I’m devoted to: a world in which many worlds peacefully coexist, a world of tolerance and mutual respect where the other is not seen as the enemy but rather as a complementary beauty. 

Greta Rossi

MA in International Relations, University of Bologna

I hold a BA in International Affairs from John Cabot University in Rome and an MA in International Relations from the University of Bologna. I graduated in March 2021 with a final dissertation on feminist politics during the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, combining social movement studies with political anthropology and disaster studies. Elements coming from these different fields were employed to understand contentious politics during critical junctures like the pandemic period, and to conceptualize the pandemic itself. My academic research has thus far focused on the political effects of social movements’ mobilization, with particular reference to feminist and far right groups in Italy and the US.

Federico Simoni

Master's student in Philosophy, University of Bologna

My name is Federico Simoni, and I was born and raised in Bologna, where I graduated in Philosophy with a thesis involving Hegel's political theory (and in particular the Elements of the Philosophy of Right). My main interests therefore concern german classical philosophy, and I am currently writing my master degree's thesis on Karl Marx's Capital. I am focusing on the Marxian studies currently developing with the new critical edition of Marx’s complete works (MEGA2), and hope to contribute myself to their dissemination. Besides my research, I have been involved for years in right to housing activism in Bologna. 

Cera Y. J. Tan

PhD candidate in a joint-degree program in Literature at the National University of Singapore and Digital Humanities at King’s College London

Cera Y. J. Tan is a PhD candidate in a joint-degree program in Literature at the National University of Singapore and Digital Humanities at King’s College London. She holds a BA and MA from the National University of Singapore, English Language and Literature department. Her research fields include critical and cultural theory with a focus on biopolitics and technology. She is currently researching the structure of anticipation in the biopolitical oeuvre and its implications on predictive algorithms driving the various facets of life, not least health, law, and civics. Her work has appeared in the journals Cultural Politics and Media Art Study and Theory. Her recent publication examined the techno-biopolitical stakes of contact-tracing technologies implemented in Singapore during the height of the epidemiological crisis. 
 

Luca Villaggi

Graduate Student in Sociology and Social Research, University of Bologna

Luca Villaggi holds a bachelor degree in Economics and a master degree in Sociology and Social Research from the University of Bologna. He graduated in March 2021 and he carried out a theoretical and empirical research on the current transformations of welfare systems, assuming as main hypothesis the crisis of social reproduction in the context of contemporary capitalism. Currently, he is applying for PhD courses, in order to continue his study and research activities. His intellectual interests concern the neoliberal transformations of welfare and labor, focusing on their differential outcomes in terms of class, gender and race.