Biography

Gaia Giuliani is permanent researcher at the Centro de Estudos Socias (CES) University of Coimbra (PT) (2018-), Associate professor in Political philosophy (ASN 2017, Italy), founding member of InteRGRace - Interdisciplinary Research Group on Race and Racisms (2014-) and member of the International Advisory Boards of the international journal "Socioscapes. International Journal of Societies, Politics and Cultures" (http://www.pmedizioni.it/collana/socioscapes-international-journal-of-societies-politics-and-cultures/), of the Italy-based international journal "Studi Culturali"(https://www.mulino.it/riviste/issn/1824-369X) and of the Italy-based online international journal "Europeansouth" (europeansouth.postcolonialitalia.it). She obtained her PhD in History of political Thought at the University of Torino (2005) and received then 3 postdoctoral fellowships, respectively from the University of Bologna (2007-2009), the University of Technology Sydney (2009-2010) funded by the Australian Government under the scheme Endeavour Research Fellowship, and the Center for Social Studies (CES) (2015-2019), funded by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology [FCT]. She was research assistant in Political Theory and Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at the Dept. Social and Political Studies - University of Bologna (Italy) (2009-2015). In 2009, as lecturer at the course on Colonial and Postcolonial Studies she was awarded the grade of Graduate Student Excellence in teaching (2008-2009), by the University of California representative at the University of Bologna. She was then undergraduate supervisor of the course on "Race, Ethnicity and Racism" at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge (2014-2015). Since 2016 she is lecturing regularly at the PhD courses (Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship; Human rights; Democracy in the 21st century) at CES. In 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 she teaches the topic "The semantics of racism in contemporary European and broadly Western contexts: intersectionality and the colonial archive" of the International Master on "Issues on Sociology of Politics and Democracy" at the Faculty of Economics (FEUC) of the University of Coimbra. Her research interests focus on visual constructions of race and whiteness from an intersectional viewpoint in British and Italian nation-building processes and colonial experiences, the US, the Pacific, and postcolonial Europe. Her methodology crosses Political Philosophy, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Cultural and Gender Studies. Her research project at CES (2015-) aims at a critical discourse analysis of texts coding racialised and gendered monstrosity and 'fears of disasters and crisis' and their symbolic and material impact in the context of the War on terror, the so-called migrant and refugee crises, and the crise of European and Western self-representation. In 2018, she became Principal investigator of the FCT-funded three-year project "(De)OTHERING - Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and 'internal Others' in Portuguese and European mediascapes"(2018-2121): POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029997. https://deothering.ces.uc.pt/en_GB/ Among her publications: the single-authored monographic book "Beyond curiosity. James Mill e la costruzione del governo coloniale britannico in India" (Aracne, 2008); the co-authored monographic book "Bianco e nero. Storia dell'identità razziale degli italiani" with dr. Cristina Lombardi-Diop (Le Monnier/Mondadori Education 2013) awarded with the First prize 2014 in the 20th-21st century category by the American Association for Italian Studies; the edited book "Il colore della nazione" (Le Monnier/Mondadori Education 2015); and the single-authored book "Zombi, alieni e mutanti. Le paure dall'11 settembre a oggi" (Le Monnier/Mondadori Education 2016). In 2018 she has published her first monographic book in English "Race, Nation, and Gender in Modern Italy: Intersectional Representations in Visual Culture" (Palgrave Macmillan), which was Finalist, Fifth Place Ex Aequo of the Edinburgh Gadda Prize (2019). In 2020 she will publish the Routledge monographic book titled "Environmental Disasters, Migrations and the War on Terror: A Postcolonial Investigation of Cultural Constructions of Monstrosity".