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The movements of mining : German miners in renaissance Italy (1450s-1560s)
No full textDefence date: 11 October 2022Examining Board: Professor Regina Grafe, (European University Institute); Professor Lauren Kassell, (European University Institute); Professor Pamela H. Smith, (Columbia University); Professor Jane Whittle, (University of Exeter)‘The Movements of Mining’ explores the historical relationship between mining and mobility. Few historical actors offer a more illuminating perspective on this connection than German-speaking miners who developed substantial technical expertise in highly productive mines located in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. The movement of experts across Europe was paramount to the development of local mining activities. In Renaissance Italy, territorial rulers in the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Florence envisioned great economic and fiscal opportunities from the discovery of new metallic deposits in their territories. Lacking the necessary skills to set up large-scale mining enterprises, rulers fostered the migration of technical expertise through the recruitment of miners from Saxony and Habsburg Tyrol. With the present study I contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between mining and migration and broaden accounts of scientific expertise and mobility in at least three ways. First, I show that the mobility of German-speaking miners was the result of shared customary practices of law and labour. This challenges conventional conceptions of state-driven craftsmen’s migrations in the preindustrial economy. Second, I question the expectation that mobility triggered technological transfer by demonstrating that claims to expertise hindered rather than facilitated the exchange of knowledge in early modern mines. Third, I provide new research trajectories to the continuities and similarities that mining activities shared across space, and propose a complex, open-ended, and actor-based account of how the circulation of expertise unfolded in the early modern period. Although political authorities played a pivotal role in this process of migration, the relationship between mobility and mining developed as a result of a more complex framework for male and female miners to move across juridical, political, and geographical territories. Based on a large body of manuscript, visual, and printed sources from the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century collected in German, Italian, and Austrian archives and libraries, I examine a relatively unknown process of migration. More specifically, I explore heterogeneous historiographical accounts of mining and migration to unearth the multifaceted historical layers that narratives of economic growth and technological transfer have long concealed. To achieve this objective, I engage with five different cases in detail: 1) the cross-fertilization of mining laws from the German-speaking land to Renaissance Italy, and the different solutions it offered to territorial rulers; 2) the attitudes of male and female miners towards mobility in light of the fragmented framework of laws, customs, and regulations; 3) the labour regime implemented by German experts to translate mobility into sustenance; 4) the role of gender relations in the mines, and the impact of women’s work in the mining district; 5) the (failed) transfer of mining technologies, and the intertwining of sources of knowledge in early modern mines
'We must work with a missionary spirit' : the League of Nations Information Section and public diplomacy
No full textDefence date: 16 December 2022Examining Board: Prof. Corinna Unger, (EUI, supervisor); Prof. Glenda Sluga, (EUI); Prof. Karen Gram-Skjoldager, (Aarhus University); Prof. Alanna O’Malley, (Leiden University)This thesis explores the information strategies of the League of Nations. Building on the recent literature on interwar international organizations and the related activities of non-state actors, I show how the first international bureaucracy had an uncomfortable relationship with public opinion. As officials downplayed their work in official publications, the League’s strategy in this field has long been called passive. In my research I show that, despite various restrictions and a ‘taboo’ on propaganda, League officials conducted an active lobby for the international organization. They stayed in close contact with individuals they considered opinion-shapers and tried to broaden the network of individuals promoting the League on their behalf. In this lobby, cooperation with the independent League societies is key. Officials traveled around the world to lecture about the League and adapted their message to national contexts. The actors made clear that a stable world order would only be achieved with the League managing international relations in the right direction. Using the existing literature on the practices of the League’s Secretariat and the documents in eight archives in four countries, I look at four case study countries to see how the officials of the Information Section ventured into the world. These cases posed different challenges to the League’s section: officials encountered the struggle for self-determination in India, found a relatively willing public in the Netherlands, an ideological opposite in Italy, and tried to keep the United States, not a member, close to the international organization. The tensions between national and international loyalties become visible in the ways officials approached the public in these varying case studies. Comparing my findings with the work of other actors in the interwar period, I argue that the cooperation between the Information Section and the civil society organizations can be considered as the public diplomacy of the League of Nations
Manufacturing informality : global production networks and the reproduction of informalized labour regimes in Europe’s peripheries
No full textDefence date: 02 March 2022Examining Board : Prof. Dr. Dorothee Bohle (EUI); Prof. Dr. Klarita Gërxhani (EUI); Prof. Dr. Jörg Flecker (University of Vienna); Prof. Dr. Guglielmo Giuseppe Maria Meardi (SNS)Informalized employment persists and emerges in new forms in advanced and developing economies although it often coincides with precariousness, unfair competition, and loss of revenues and state legitimacy. To investigate the mechanisms of such persistence this thesis builds an extended structuralist approach that combines Global Production Networks (GPNs) studies and Labour Process Theory (LPT). This approach reframes informalization as a tool of labour control and posits that informalization - while influenced by structural economic pressures and local socio-institutional contexts - is ultimately shaped by the employer-employee relations in the workplace. The thesis adopts the footwear-garment GPNs in (Southern) Italy and Albania as a typical case study to analyse the informality persistence within globalized production processes. The research relies on an extended case method and a multi-sited, qualitative fieldwork based on interviews and focus groups with workers, unionists, managers, labour inspectors, NGO representatives, policymakers, and other stakeholders. Firstly, through an analysis of recent anti-informality policies in the two countries, the thesis highlights the economic and political costs of eradicating informal employment. In both countries, policies lead to a low-compliance-equilibrium that partially steer informalization practices from full to partial informality without however eliminating widespread irregularities. Secondly, the research analyses the differentiated informalization dynamics that emerge within the garment-footwear GPNs and shows how these are primarily used by firms to cut labour costs and enhance workers’ disposability. At the same time, informalized employment is shaped by workers and persists only as long as they are unable or unwilling to resist it. The thesis explains the differentiated informalized labour regimes that emerge in GPNs as the combination of three variables: firms’ position in the chain and the competitive pressures they face, the associational power of workers, and the level of workers’ replaceability due to the specific skills required by the labour process of each firm and the local labour supply
Revolution and decline : Russian innovation and intellectual property 1917-2020
No full textDefence date: 06 October 2022Examining Board: Prof. Peter Frank Drahos (European University Institute, EUI Supervisor); Prof. Giovanni Sartor (European University Institute); Prof. Jens Hemmingsen Schovsbo (University of Copenhagen); Prof. William Van Caenegem (Bond University)The puzzle that drove my curiosity to pursue this research project is how the Soviet Union was able to industrialise in the absence of intellectual property, while Russia fails to re-industrialise despite adopting strong intellectual property rights that are presumably better served to promote innovation. To understand this puzzle, I analysed Russia’s 100-year history of institutional experiments with legal forms, incentives, and organisational structures in search of an optimal system of knowledge production and diffusion. In this work, I relied on theories of historical institutionalism, national innovation systems, history of science, and legal transplants. I also conducted case studies in the pharmaceutical and information technology industries. In addition to traditional legal, scholarly, and statistical sources, the study was enriched by more than 40 semi-structured interviews with key experts working for the government, universities, and industry. My original contribution to knowledge is a new understanding of how global intellectual property legal transplants, originating from the WTO TRIPS Agreement, altered the regulatory design of the Russian innovation system by re-shaping its open knowledge-sharing principles and esteem-driven incentives. This re-shaping was not a matter of careful architectural design but rather an exogenous shock that contributed to the system’s fragmentation while creating opportunities for extractive groups of interests to maintain their status quo. Ultimately, my research shows that for Russia, institutional mismatch leads to lost opportunities to escape from ‘the resource curse’ and to diversify its economy. The Russian case is not simply a story of institutional decline, it is also a story of new informal rule of the game evolving in which new networks are steering Russia’s approach to innovation. Russia’s desire to regain the pride of being a knowledge-rich society is being mediated by new networks of influence over Russia’s high technology sectors.Chapter 3 'The Russian innovation system' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Russian innovation in the era of patent globalization' (2022) in the journal 'International review of intellectual property and competition law
Governing personal data and trade in digital services
No full textPublished online: 25 March 2024The regulation of personal data varies widely between countries, with potential effects on digital services. We develop a taxonomy for the regulation of cross-border personal data transfers and systematically categorize 143 countries in one of the three data models identified, which are an open data model, a conditional model, and a control model. Using a gravity model, we then study if sharing a similar regulatory model between trading partners is associated with trade in digital services. Moreover, we assess if enacting a comprehensive data protection law impacts the relationship between data models and digital services. The open model of data transfers appears to support data flows, regardless of the presence of a domestic regime for personal data. We find a negative effect on digital services for the conditional model that prescribes conditions that need to be fulfilled to transfer personal data across borders. Interestingly, we find that this negative effect is more than offset by the presence of a comprehensive data protection law. Finally, the control model, which has strict conditions to transfer personal data outside the country, only has a negative and significant effect when a domestic regime for data protection is implemented. The latter is likely to reflect the cost burden of firms to comply with these regulations as the trust channel might not be effective in countries characterized by government surveillance
Climate change, air pollution and inequalities in exposure and vulnerability
No full textDefence date: 26 October 2022Examining Board: Professor Fabrizio Bernardi (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Supervisor); Professor Härkönen (European University Institute); Professor Raya Muttarak (University of Bologna, External Institution); Professor Emilio Zagheni (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, External Institution)Climate change poses new risks for global public health, but some subpopulations are in higher danger. Extreme temperatures and air pollution are tightly related to climate change and main sources of environmental hazard due to their detrimental effect on several important life outcomes. Moreover, current social inequalities often map existing or emerging environmental inequalities. In my PhD thesis, I contribute to the burgeoning literature interested on the population consequences of climate change and socioeconomic inequalities with four chapters. In the first and second chapter, I study how socioeconomic status moderates the effect of extreme temperatures on birth outcomes and mortality in Spain. In the third chapter, I focus on disparities in the exposure to air pollution at schools in Italy. In the fourth chapter, I inquire how a policy improving air quality in London benefitted children school attendance. Overall, the thesis shows socioeconomic status to importantly affect vulnerability to environmental risks with concerning implications on how climate change could affect existing social inequalities in the future.Chapter 2 ‘Extreme heat, birth outcomes, and socioeconomic heterogeneity' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Extreme heat, birth outcomes, and socioeconomic heterogeneity' (2022) in the journal ‘Demography’Chapter 3 ‘Extreme temperature and mortality by educational attainment in Spain, 2012-
2018' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Extreme temperature and mortality by educational attainment in Spain, 2012–2018' (2022) in the journal ‘European journal of population’Chapter 5 ‘London congestion charge: the impact on air pollution and school attendance by
socioeconomic status' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'London congestion charge : the impact on air pollution and school attendance by socioeconomic status' (2022) in the journal ‘Population and environment
Questioning national averages and explaining subnational variation in early childhood education and care provision in Spain : a qualitative comparative analysis
No full textPublished online: 09 January 2025This article illustrates that the comparatively high national rate of early childhood education and care provision in Spain masks significant within-country variation. It applies Qualitative Comparative Analysis to test which conditions explain variation in regional coverage rates as the outcome. It finds that there is a socio-economic and a political path to high coverage. Case studies reveal that service expansion has also been motivated by concerns over demographic ageing and population decline. The article contributes to the literatures on early childhood education and care and, more broadly, social investment and welfare state reform
Struggles over epistemic capital : complex governance objects and the making of lethal autonomous weapons systems
No full textPublished online: 29 April 2025The regulation of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) has emerged as a salient and perplexing issue in global governance, especially in the UN GGE on LAWS. This article argues that contentions over defining and regulating LAWS extend beyond country positions. As LAWS are mobilised as a complex governance object, these disputes also stem from struggles over epistemic capital, where experts provide different interpretations of such systems’ component parts and functional properties. The article analyzes three epistemic domains—legal, technical, and military—in the academic debate over LAWS as proxies for the underlying codified capital that can be mobilized as a resource for epistemic power in the regulatory exercise. Each of the three domains offers a distinct rendering of LAWS, differing in emphasis, characterization, and assessment of regulatory prospects. The article highlights how the delineation of governance objects considered complex is a process which interpellates and reinforces epistemic authorities, thus generating political effects
The resilience of constitutional courts and their resistance to autocratization : beyond binaries, where time matters
No full textPublished online: 12 January 2026This article explores constitutional court (CC) resilience in a comparative perspective, across nine national jurisdictions and some transnational judiciaries, to help identify sources and approaches enhancing CC capacity to resist autocratization. It attempts to interpret the individual contributions to the special issue, pointing to a set of factors impacting CC resilience. Some articles highlight the essential role of structural conditions, while others rather emphasize the importance of institutional development and agency. The article then outlines avenues for further research of CC resilience, which should engage with new challenges, including renewing democracy through deliberation and trust-building.The publication has received funding via the European University Institute’s Widening Programme call 2024 with the contribution of the European Union and the EUI Contracting States
The construction of international order in the 1930s : polyphony of technocracy in McDougall’s ‘Economic appeasement’ (1936)
No full textThis paper contributes to our understanding of how international order was produced in the economic discourse around the League of Nations of the 1930s. Important aspects of the role of the League of Nation’s economic and financial ‘machinery’ in the renegotiation of international order in the interwar period have been well reconstructed, prominently by Clavin in Securing the World Economy. Yet, what existing studies have in common is that they provide macro-historical accounts of intellectual traditions, political objectives and actor constellations of international economic governance, including the historical shape of the ideas of liberal internationalism and their commitments to technocracy. What they do not cover is the micro-picture, the underlying semantic fabric that makes the world. This is where this working paper steps in. This paper presents the findings of a micro-analysis of the 1936 Memorandum ‘Economic Appeasement’, written by Frank McDougall for the League’s Economic and Financial Organization. The analysis shows that the international order constructed through McDougall’s Memorandum does not arise from a single, coherent principle but from the layering of heterogeneous registers. The economy is simultaneously cast as organism, machine, and force-field; cooperation functions both as technical mechanism and as civilisational marker; poverty is framed both as statistical variable and as existential danger. These overlapping codings are not contradictions but coexisting logics that stabilise the discourse. Furthermore, the analysis shows how the semantic fabric of the Memorandum generates distinct discursive effects that recast the landscape of the political in multiple ways. It does not only formulate proposals but produces hierarchies of actors, defines the temporal logics of politics, and establishes the epistemic conditions under which action appears possible. It reconstitutes ‘the masses’ as indicators rather than actors, positions colonies as reserves and developmental objects, and assigns governments the monopoly of responsibility. It ties welfare to security and recasts political decision-making as technical necessity. Notably, in an intriguing discursive move international organisations arise as the manifestation of ‘Western civilisation’, which, in turn, is not about cultural identity but is the institutional framework that ensure ‘world peace’.This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 885285)