Angelica Pesarini

Angelica Pesarini is an Assistant Professor in Race and Cultural Studies/Race and Diaspora and Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. After obtaining a PhD in Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Leeds, she worked at Lancaster University and at NYU Florence, where she designed and taught the course "Black Italia". Her work focuses on dynamics of race, gender, identity, and citizenship in colonial and (post)colonial Italy. On this topic, she is currently writing a monograph on the lived experience of Black "mixed race” Italian women born during Italian colonialism in East Africa, and the use of oral sources as forms of counter-narratives. She is interested in the racialization of the political discourse on immigration in Europe, and with The Black Mediterranean Collective, of which she is a founding member, she co-edited "The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders, and Citizenship" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Angelica is the author of a short semi-fictional story published in "Future. Il domani narrato dalle voci di oggi" (Future. Tomorrow narrated by today’s voices, 2019), the first anthology written by eleven Italian women of African descent. She also co-translated into Italian "Undercommons. Fugitive Planning and Black Study" (Moten and Harney), and "Blues Legacies and Black feminism" by Angela Y. Davis. As a scholar activist, she is engaged in the Italian anti-racist movement and collaborates with grass-roots organizations focusing on social justice and human rights.