Education

I have studied Political Science and International Relations at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. My “laurea” thesis, defended in 2004, was a synthesis on the history of the Catholic missions in India during the Sixteenth century. In 2005 I was admitted to the doctoral programme of the European University Institute in Florence. At the Department of History and Civilization I worked at a dissertation (to be defended shortly) on the conflict on missionary adaptation known as the “Malabar Rites controversy”. In order to understand that historical problem I undertook extensive archival researches in Europe, Asia and America.

I have been awarded fellowships by the Fondazione Luigi Salvatorelli, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and the Centro Universitario Cattolico.

In 2009 I was an Albin Salton short term fellow at the Warburg Institute, where I came again in January 2011 for a two-year Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship on the early modern Catholic representations of Hinduism.
In 2013-2015 I have been a Marie Curie Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, attached to the Chair of Church History of the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.

I am currently working as a Historical consultant.