Academic Profile

Research Interests: History of Capitalism, Industrial Policy, Development Planning, and Humanitarian Diplomacy

After having studied at Maastricht University, University College Dublin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, I earned my DPhil in Modern European History from Merton College, Oxford in May 2024. My doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor Martin Conway, consisted of an institutional and strategic analysis of French and Italian industrial policy from the late 1930s to the late 1950s. Inspired by the works of Charles S. Maier, Andrew Shonfield, Alan S. Milward, Simon Reich, Barry Eichengreen, Stanley Hoffman, Richard Kuisel, Philip Nord, Philippe Mioche, Paul Ginsborg, Fabrizio Barca, Franco Amatori, and Sabino Cassese, my dissertation emphasised that 1945 did not constitute a "O hour" in the relationship between capitalism and the state in Modern France and Italy. According to my thesis, Italian Fascism and the Vichy regime built pivotal technocratic and corporatist industrial planning bodies, which post-war democrats rescued and reorganised as the backbone of the ambitious "developmental states" that coordinated France and Italy's industrial rebirth during the "Glorious Thirty" (1945-75). The thesis predominantly focused on the history of the French General Planning Commissariat (CGP) and the Italian Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), and their effort to coordinate the post-war reconstruction and restructuring of the steel industry. 

Between April 2024 and June 2025 I worked as Postdoctoral Research Assistant to Professor Andrew Thompson CBE, while he led the "Civil Society in Crisis Contexts" workstream of the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, chaired by former British Prime Minister Theresa May. The results of this work were our contribution to the Commission's final report – presented at the UN in April 2025 – and the "Framework of Analysis on Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking", co-authored by Professor Thompson, Marly Tiburcio Carneiro, and myself. 

I am currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher for the Nuffield Humanitarian Forum, assisting Professor Thompson and Sir Mike Aaronson with the coordination of the Forum's research agenda, events and policy engagement strategy. In this capacity, I act as Secretary during the Forum meetings, engaging with policy-makers, practitioners and academics concerned with reflecting upon the future organisation, scope and strategic priorities of multilateral humanitarian and development aid. 

I am also working on a new research project, which focuses on the contribution of French, Italian and British research institutes to discussions concerning the institutional and strategic reorganisation of "development planning" throughout the first "Development Decade" (1960-70). Responding to the works of David Ekbladh, Sara Lorenzini, Jeremy Adelman, Michele Alacevich, Martin Daunton and Quinn Slobodian, this new project seeks to take Western European research institutes seriously as key actors committed to reshaping the post-war US-dominated "development consensus", and determined to build a distinctively European framework for development policy. My new project especially focuses on the origins and research initiatives of the French Institute for the Study of Economic and Social Development (IEDES), the Italian Centre for the Study of Economic Development (CSSE), and the British Institute for Development Studies (IDS).