Silvia Pizzirani

Current Position

Didactic Tutor, Department of the Arts

Work and Education

February 1, 2024 – January 31, 2025
Research fellowship within the PRIN project Inequality and Generations in Italy (1914-2008), Department of Historical Studies – University of Milan (La Statale).
Supervisor: Prof. Emanuela Scarpellini

2023-2024
Historical research on the Camera del Lavoro Territoriale of Florence between the 1980s and 1990s, a project of the Camera del Lavoro Metropolitana of Florence and Fondazione Valore Lavoro.

2022-2024
Collaboration with RCS Mediagroup S.p.A. for historical research, writing, and publication of four popular history books for the series I grandi segreti d’Italia, published by Gazzetta dello Sport:

• L’Achille Lauro e la crisi di Sigonella (November 2022)
• L’assassinio di Accursio Miraglia (April 2023)
• I fondi neri dell’IRI (September 2023)
• Genova 1960: le magliette a strisce (April 2024)

2020
Archival research and interview support in fall 2020 for the book curated by Andrea Mochi Sismondi, Il Segno di Ustica – 45 Conversazioni con artisti e curatori per raccontare lo straordinario percorso creativo nato dalla battaglia per la verità, Ateliersi, Bologna, June 2021.

2018-2022
Ph.D. in Global History, Cultures, and Politics (34th cycle), Department of History, Cultures, and Civilizations, Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna.
Research project in contemporary history: Virtuous consumerism? Politics and consumption in Italy in the 1970s.
Supervisor: Prof. Stefano Cavazza
Final grade: Excellent

2014-2017

MA History, Università di Bologna
Final Dissertation: Associazionismo femminile e consumo energetico in Inghilterra, tra gli anni
Venti e gli anni Cinquanta.
Supervisor: prof. Paolo Capuzzo, Correlatrice: prof.ssa Maria Pia Casalena
Final mark: 110/110 cum laude

2010-2014

BA History, Università di Bologna
Final dissertation: Quarantadue notti e quarantatré giorni. L’occupazione delle terre incolte
d’Arneo e il rapporto tra il PCI e i contadini.
Supervisor: prof.ssa Marica Tolomelli
Final mark: 110/110 cum laude

Publications 

Journal Articles

• Natural Born Shoppers: Women, Consumption, and Politics in Italy during the 1970s, Italica, special issue Real Women and Imagined Femininity: Images of Womanhood in Modern Italy, vol. 100, 3/2023.

• Il sindacato delle persone. La Camera del Lavoro di Firenze durante gli anni Ottanta, in P. Causarano (ed.), Il lavoro fa la storia. Scenari fiorentini tra XX e XXI secolo, A òpra. Annali di storia e studi della Fondazione Valore Lavoro, EditPress, Florence, 2023.

• Consumi e politica nella storia d’Europa, Ricerche di Storia Politica, Il Mulino, 3/2023.

• Oro nero, politica verde? Eni, ambiente ed energia nel secondo dopoguerra, for the special issue Imprese e ambiente, Impresa e Storia, FrancoAngeli, 46/2022.

• Against the dictatorship of rationality. Austerity and consumption in Italy during the seventies, History of Retailing and Consumption, special issue The Politics of Consumption, vol. 8, 1/2022.

• Quando un’opera diventa polemica. Il Monumento al Partigiano di Imola attraverso i suoi momenti pubblici, in the dossier Sul piedistallo della storia. Monumenti e statue in Emilia-Romagna dall’Ottocento a oggi, E-Review, Viella, 9/2022.

• La consumatrice in rivolta. La politicizzazione del consumo e il ruolo della donna nel pensiero di Teresa Billington-Grey, Storia e Futuro. Rivista di storia e storiografia online, n. 54, December 2021.

Edited Volumes

• F. Gabbriellini and S. Pizzirani, Profondo nero. Storia e storie del petrolio, Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale, issue 64, Bologna, Mimesis, 2024.

• P. Menditto and S. Pizzirani, Le strade della cittadinanza. Le società europee tra benessere e mobilità, Bologna, BUP, 2022.

• ESSHC European Social Science History Conference 2025 – I teach you how to grow old. Class, gender, and generational discriminations in Italy during the First Republic, Leiden, March 26-29, 2025.

• Sisam Conference – The Environmental History of Italy – Where the automobile has no rivals. Fiat, environment, and leisure between oil crises and the 1980s, Naples, September 26-28, 2024.

• Sissco – Cantieri di Storia XII – Il metano ci dà una mano? Eni, hydrocarbons, and the environment: a complicated relationship, September 14, 2023.

• ESSHC European Social Science History Conference 2023 – Rise and Fall of a Myth. The Change in Perception of the Vietnam War in Italian Popular Culture (1973-1979), in collaboration with Pasquale Menditto, Gothenburg, April 15, 2023.

• GenerAzioni: Research Meets the City – University of Bologna and Biblioteca Salaborsa, March 16, 2023.

Language skills

Italian – Native speaker
English –C1
German - B2

Funding and Academic Awards

• Scholarship recipient for LXII Study Week ISIG: Cities and Regions under the Spell of (De-)Globalisation, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, October 12-14, 2022.

• Scholarship recipient for FREEDOM(S) – International Graduate School in Gender History, University of Naples Federico II, September 30, 2021.

• Second Runner-up at the Three Minute Thesis Competition – Bologna University, February 20, 2020.

• Marco Polo Scholarship recipient – University of Bologna, for a research stay in London (February 1 – April 30, 2020).

• Cassini Junior Grant winner (2019), in collaboration with Ph.D. Pasquale Menditto.

• Sissco Scholarship recipient for participation in Cantieri di Storia IX, Padua, September 13-15, 2017.

Memberships

ASMI

SISAM

SISLAV

SISSCO