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'Noi ci stiamo provando' : queer lives and the anti-mafia struggle in Sicily and the Italian peninsula from 1968 to the present
No full textDefence date: 07 November 2025Examining Board: Prof. Benno Gammerl (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Lucy Riall (European University Institute); Prof. Philip Cooke (University of Strathclyde); Dr. Baris Cayli Messina (University of Lincoln)This thesis investigates how queer cisgender activists in contemporary Sicily and the Italian peninsula have understood and engaged in antimafia activism from 1968 to 2024. It asks how sexual identity shapes activists’ perceptions of the mafia, their motivations for resistance, and the praxis of their activism. To address this question, the thesis draws on five detailed case studies of individual activists in addition to a short supplementary analysis of Arcigay’s involvement in the antimafia movement at the institutional level. The research utilizes archival materials, interviews, and texts ranging from memoirs to social media accounts, following a life-history approach that reconstructs individual trajectories within the broader social and political contexts of 20th and 21st century southern Italy and Italy. The thesis demonstrates that queer individuals have participated in antimafia activism since the 1970s and that their sexual identities often informed both their understanding of the mafia and their commitment to opposing it. While most activists characterized the mafia as grotesque, homophobic and repressive, I show that their motivations to resist were not limited to this perception. Indeed, resistance was tied to broader sociopolitical agendas. Male activists, in particular, viewed their sexuality as incompatible with the mafia’s moral order—either as a revolutionary stance or as a rejection of its patriarchal worldview. Male activists also interpreted the mafia as psychologically trapped or ‘closeted’, a view which I argue echoes queer experiences of repression and self-liberation. At the institutional level, the thesis shows that in the 2000s Arcigay’s southern branches pressured the national organization to take a stronger antimafia position. Therein, I argue that institutional queer antimafia activism was motivated by grievances against homophobic persecution, an understanding of the mafia as grotesque, a sense of solidarity with other oppressed groups, and the opportunity to forge wider alliances with groups participating in the antimafia struggle. Beyond filling this central lacuna, the thesis makes three key contributions to antimafia studies. First, through the case of Nino Gennaro it reconstructs activism between the 1960s and the rise of the mass antimafia movement in the 1980s, revealing intersections between the antimafia struggle, queer identity, and Cold War-era politics. Second, it challenges the field’s focus on martyrdom and tragedy as triggers for activism by placing the lived experiences and motivations of non-bereaved activists at the centre of analysis. Third, it expands the conceptual scope of antimafia scholarship by demonstrating that opposition to the mafia has also been a site of sexual and moral resistance. In doing so, the thesis redraws the cultural and affective dimensions of antimafia activism and establishes queerness as a critical lens for understanding civic resistance against organized crime in contemporary Italy
Celestial navigation : article 101(3) TFEU, environmental integration, and the structuring role of public policies
No full textDefence date: 10 November 2025
Examining Board: Prof. Nicolas Petit, (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Giorgio Monti (European University Institute and Tilburg University); Prof. Niamh Dunne (London School of Economics); Prof. Julian Nowag (Hong Kong University and Lund University)Recent and less recent debates about whether competition law should be greened ask us to reexamine Article 101(3) TFEU in the light of environmental imperatives. Does the environmental integration principle allow, or command, a relaxation of the exemption conditions? And if so, under what circumstances? In the absence of definitive guidance from the Courts, the Commission's longstanding enforcement and policymaking practice in relation to environmental agreements has been characterised by ambiguity and oscillations. As a result, the exact place of environmental considerations in Article 101(3) TFEU remains uncertain. This study proposes to look beyond competition law to identify structuring principles for the treatment of environmental concerns in competition cases. The inquiry makes a working hypothesis: that competition authorities can use the environmental policy context as an external reference point to navigate the interaction between competition law and environmental sustainability, much like sailors engaged in celestial navigation use the stars to determine their course. To test this hypothesis, and to flesh out how the environmental policy context can inform the analysis of environmental concerns under Article 101(3) TFEU, the study contextualises the integration principle as one among many instruments for coordinating policies. At the same time, the study looks inside competition law and illuminates the potential of the policy context to structure the entry of external policy objectives into competition law, distinguishing between direct and mediated entry. Building on these insights, and with the help of case studies from the European Commission’s and the Dutch ACM’s practice, the study examines the diverse dynamics that can arise between environmental policy instruments and environmental agreements. Ultimately, the study argues that the type of policy instrument at play in a competition case and its interaction with the relevant environmental agreement can structure competition authorities’ choices about whether and how to interpret Article 101(3) TFEU in the presence of environmental concerns.Chapter 3 'Coordinating competition and the environment : the integration principle in context' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter 'Green policy coordination : competition policy’s potential for supporting sustainable development' (2022) in the book ‘Green ambitions for sustainable development : past, present and future
Sovereign debt as international investment : tensions surrounding the scope of international investment protection
No full textDefence date: 12 May 2025Examining Board: Prof. Jürgen Kurtz (Melbourne Law School, Supervisor); Prof. Sergio Puig De La Parra (European University Institute) Prof. Annamaria Viterbo (University of Turin); Prof. Michael Waibel (University of Vienna)The dissertation explores the interaction between the international law of foreign investments and sovereign debt governance, as it provides a strategic lens to understand fundamental tensions and dysfunctionalities characterizing both legal regimes. Compared to previous scholarship, the study focuses distinctively on questions of scope, investigating the substantive boundaries of international investment protection as well as their evolution over time and attempting to disentangle normative evaluations from legal analysis. Methodologically, the dissertation combines doctrinal legal research, an empirical investigation of treaty drafting practice and inter-disciplinary insights from economics and political sciences. It aims first at addressing the contested question of whether public debt instruments may fall within the realm of investment protection and, second, at capturing the evolutive dimension of the interaction between investment law and sovereign debt, using it as a prism to examine fundamental dynamics driving change in the international investment regime. Despite recognizing that the extension of investment protection to public debt aggravates inefficiencies in the governance of debt crises, the study contends that, in general terms, the expansive reach of the international investment regime can cover various forms of sovereign debt, including bonds. Reliance on elastic hermeneutical criteria, amenable to be interpreted according to the preferences of adjudicators, has proven to be of little help in making sense of the perimeter of investment protection. Furthermore, it shows that, notwithstanding state actors’ increasing awareness as to the sensitivity of such regime interplay, investment treaty drafting practice continues to reveal varying policy preferences regarding the treatment of sovereign debt. More broadly, the dissertation argues that the evolution of the investment regime’s substantive boundaries over time has been shaped in significant part by a feedback dynamic between arbitral practice and states’ norm-setting choices, leaving fundamental tensions between opposing normative conceptions of investment largely unresolved. A more radical rethinking exercise of the investment regime’s scope in light of its functional justifications would be warranted.Chapter VI 'Sovereign Debt Governance and the Evolution of International Investment Treaty Drafting Practice: Convergence or Divergence?' and chapter VII 'The Feedback Loop Between Investment Arbitration and States’ Rulemaking: Are the Boundaries of the Investment Regime Really Changing?' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as articles: 'International investment agreements and sovereign debt : an empirical analysis' (2023) in the journal 'Capital markets law journal' and 'Are financial claims protected investments? : insights from Gramercy v. Peru on treaty reform and the ongoing ‘soul-search’ of the international investment regime.' (2023) in the journal 'Diritto del commercio internazionale
Explaining political responses to inequality : the role of grievances and resources
No full textDefence date: 24 January 2025Examining Board: Arnout Van de Rijt (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Simon J. Hix (European University Institute, co-supervisor); Prof. Sarah L. de Lange (University of Amsterdam); Prof. Diane Bolet (University of Essex)Economic inequality is a defining contemporary issue with far-reaching but often unclear political implications. This dissertation relies on political science and sociological approaches to argue that context moderates the relationship between economic and political inequality, explaining the often contradictory empirical evidence on the inequality-redistribution nexus. Contextual conditions shaping resources, such as preexisting organizations, dense networks, or contending narratives, prevent or facilitate the translation of grievances into political change. The three articles summarized below emphasize and detail these factors. Chapter Two examines deprivation in the provision of banking services in Spain, investigating the distinct political ramifications of private services –beyond public ones. It argues that, while public opinion does not expect the government to provide banking services in developed economies, the deterioration in the provision of these services can still lead to political change through its socio-economic implications. Moreover, such deterioration can prompt a reassessment of the prevailing privatization in the sector, leading to a reevaluation of the government’s role in providing or monitoring such services. Chapter Three investigates the effect of local economic events (e.g., layoffs) on job market risk perceptions and political attitudes among local residents, during the early Covid period in the UK. These layoffs created economic grievances, heightening people’s perceptions of job market risk, especially for local within-industry layoffs. However, the economic grievances did not translate into significant political changes due to the transnational and temporary nature of the Covid crisis and its implications for blame attribution. Chapter Four understands protest mobilizations as resources mediating the relationship between economic and political inequality. It argues that mobilizations can shift narratives around inequality and shape aggregate demands for redistribution via changes in perceptions of inequality and the role of government. These observations highlight the importance of social narratives and bandwagon effects in contesting economic inequality
Global security, gender politics, and the Prevention and Countering of Violent Extremism (P/CVE) : a multi-scalar analysis
No full textDefence date: , 02 October 2025Examining Board: Prof. Jeffrey T. Checkel (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Raffaella A. Del Sarto (European University Institute); Prof. Annika Björkdahl (Lund University); Prof. Katherine E. Brown (University of Birmingham)In 2015, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2242, which calls for concrete action by States to integrate their agendas on women, peace, and security with policies on counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism. The counter-terrorism regime, and in particular, national Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies, have been criticised for relying on securitising, racialised, and gender essentialist foundations. This thesis investigates the national implementation of this resolution in Norway and Canada by drawing on and building upon poststructuralist feminist theories and decentred security governance. I explore how notions of gender are performed, stabilised, and/or transformed through P/CVE policies and practices. My thesis aims to answer three broad research questions: (1) How do pre-emptive security laws and P/CVE policies and practices intersect with gender norms in Canada and Norway? (2) How are preconceived notions of gender shaping or misshaping P/CVE strategies in Canada and Norway? (3) How has UN Security Council Resolution 2242 been implemented on different scales? This thesis tells a story about how society changes and is shaped by national and global security concerns, and how, despite increasing gender equality, traditional gender stereotypes continue to influence security decisions. These decisions have implications wider than those of countering terrorism. It is a story of how certain public spaces go from recreational to monitored, and how some characteristics deem people suspicious, innocent, threatening, or insignificant. It is about trust-building in a climate of security and about the subjectivity of local security governance. Through a qualitative study I provide a multi-sited and multi-scalar analysis. Empirically, I draw on fieldwork in Norway and Canada, which was carried out between 2022 and 2024, conducting 40 relational interviews with practitioners, policymakers, diplomats, and the police, as well as analysing policy documents, action plans, and legal documents
Challenging autocracies from abroad : essays on Russian political emigration (2022–2024)
No full textDefence date: 19 September 2025Examining Board: Prof. Miriam A. Golden (Stanford University, former European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Elias Dinas (European University Institute); Prof. Dominik Hangartner (ETH Zurich); Prof. Joshua A. Tucker (New York University)This dissertation examines how political emigrants from authoritarian regimes sustain extraterritorial opposition politics despite the risks of transnational repression and divergent host-country responses. Political emigrants—those forced abroad primarily for opposing autocratic regimes—remain engaged in homeland politics through protests, lobbying, and advocacy. Drawing on a unique multi-wave panel survey of over 18,000 Russian emigrants who fled after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (the OutRush project), the dissertation advances theoretical and empirical understanding of opposition abroad in the context of geopolitical tension and authoritarian reach. The first chapter analyzes how international relations and host-country politics shape emigrant activism. Leveraging the global survey and panel structure, it shows that emigrants in rival states align activism with host interests, while those in allied states maintain interest in homeland politics despite risks of repression. Democratic hosts enable visible activism; autocratic hosts push emigrants toward safer symbolic dissent. Chapter two (with Ivetta Sergeeva) examines how diaspora organizations withstand repression. A conjoint experiment with nearly 6,000 emigrants reveals that regime criminalization can backfire by signaling authenticity and effectiveness, particularly in rival host states. Even in allied states, organizations sustain engagement through transparency and secure channels, underscoring the limits of transnational repression. Chapter three (with Ivetta Sergeeva) investigates solidarity and onward migration. A conjoint experiment with 2,000 emigrants finds support is prioritized for those fleeing political persecution and ethnic minorities, driven by dissent and collective guilt. Discrimination in rival states further reinforces dissident identity and solidarity with anti-war compatriots. Chapter four (with Ivetta Sergeeva) documents the hidden costs authoritarian legacies impose on migrants’ well-being. Survey and interview data show that repression, guilt, and discrimination weigh more heavily than economic integration, highlighting the deep psychological and social effects of an authoritarian homeland. Together, these chapters offer an integrated account of extraterritorial opposition politics, emphasizing the interplay of emigrant strategies, authoritarian repression, discrimination, and geopolitical context
Against text-centrism a historical interpretation of WTO security exceptions
No full textDefence date: 30 September 2025Examining Board: Prof. Jürgen Kurtz (University of Melbourne, External Supervisor); Prof. Sergio Puig De La Parra (European University Institute); Prof. Sungjoon Cho (Chicago-Kent College of Law); Prof. Ingo Venzke (University of Amsterdam)This dissertation critiques the heavily text-centric mode of inquiry prevalent in existing interpretations of WTO security exceptions, and proposes a historical method that focuses more on the role and nature of these provisions. Recently, WTO panels have been called upon to interpret security exceptions, a controversial provision that allows a WTO Member to take any action ‘which it considers’ necessary to protect its essential security interests. At the centre of intense interpretative struggle is the meaning of the phrase ‘which it considers’. Some construe this phrase as granting unfettered discretion to the invoking state, while others try to minimise the modifying scope of this phrase. This dissertation critiques both arguments as text-centric, and claims that the conundrum of ‘which it considers’ cannot be solved by a microscopic study of the text. Instead, it calls for an organic and contextual approach, which takes the treaty text out of its clinical isolation and places the text in its historical background. The mode of historical inquiry adopted in this dissertation operates on two levels. First, it deconstructs the seemingly fixed appearance of treaty terms by highlighting their historicity and contingency. This dissertation traces the family tree of security exceptions all the way back to the 19thcentury commercial treaties, to find that the phrase ‘which it considers’ is boilerplate language, a legal jargon devoid of specific meaning that has been produced through a process of rote usage and encrustation. Second, this dissertation reconstructs the role and nature of security exceptions by examining how they have been historically formed, through a dynamic process of interaction between different actors. In each chapter, the text of security exceptions, drawn from 19th and 20th-century commercial treaties, the ITO Charter, and GATT 1947, are situated and understood against their socio-politicaleconomic backgrounds. Overall, the dissertation demonstrates that a treaty text is not a timeless, objective conveyor of truth, but a value-laden construct reflecting different policy choices in myriad historical contexts
Bilateral diplomacy, Anglo-German relations, and the British applications to the EC : 1960-1972
No full textDefence date: 26 May 2025Examining Board: Prof. Federico Romero (European University Institute, Supervisor) ; Prof. Corinna Unger (European University Institute); Prof. Piers Ludlow (The London School of Economics); Prof. Katja Seidel (The University of Westminster)This thesis examines the bilateral diplomatic relationship between Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany and its influence on the development of the British applications to enter the European Community (EC) as a member state between 1960 and 1972. It investigates how diplomatic personnel in both countries worked towards British EC membership, and why differing political and economic visions for this project consistently complicated bilateral relations throughout the 12 years during which the applications were made. British governments primarily sought German aid to combat the persistent opposition of France and French President Charles de Gaulle regarding British EC entry. While Bonn was never seriously willing to challenge the French government on EC policy, German support nevertheless emerged as a key element in British strategy for pursuing the applications; in 1961-1963, 1967, and 1970-72. This analysis is placed in the wider context of Anglo-German relations in the developing Cold War and the evolution of diplomacy in both countries. It draws on government archives, private and political document collections in Britain and Germany, and the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence to present a comprehensive exploration of the long-running bilateral dialog concerning British EC membership and its influence on governmental policy. The thesis concludes that Anglo-German diplomatic relations played a longer and more central role in the achievement of British EC membership than existing historiography has depicted. Although never offering the robust political support which the British desired, German officials provided a stream of vital information to their British counterparts on EC affairs. Moreover, the experience of the British applications led to closer and better general bilateral relations. In the successful 1970-72 enlargement negotiations, Anglo-German dialogue steered the British government towards meaningful compromise on its vision for membership. With Anglo-French differences reconciled, Britain entered the European Community in 1973
Before the Gulag : forced labor and security in revolution : the Cheka - NKVD penitentiary and concentration camp system, from civil wars to NEP
No full textDefence date: 28 March 2025Examining Board: Dr. Alexander Etkind (European University Institute; Central European University, Supervisor); Dr. Juliette Cadiot (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, External Supervisor); Dr. Dina Gusejnova (London School of Economics); Dr. Georgiy Kasianov (Maria Curie - Skłodowska University)This thesis examines the development of the first system of concentration and labor camps established by the Bolsheviks during the Civil Wars. It focuses on the role of the security services in shaping early Soviet penitentiary practices and philosophies, presenting an institutional socio-history of camp administration from an internal administrative perspective. The thesis analyzes the camps’ role in Soviet political violence and their social and economic impact on the civil war and subsequent state-building efforts. Beyond the Soviet context, the thesis repositions the early penitentiary system within the global development of modern statecraft. It highlights the active role of Soviet criminologists, penitentiary experts, decision-makers, and theorists during a period when scientific ideas and penal philosophies circulated widely across borders. This multidimensional history explores key aspects of camp formation, including administration, camp sociology, gendered repression, reeducation, and the forced labor economy. It focuses on the period up to the NEP reforms when Soviet policymakers took stock of years of camp management and the repressive practices of the Red Terror. The thesis argues that the camps were politically and economically dominant in securing Bolshevik victory. However, these practices came to a threshold, and wartime techniques and practices, far from being abandoned, they were institutionalized to fit the modernization of the Soviet state. Using archival materials from Georgia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, the thesis combines quantitative analyses, such as the study of NKVD budgets and camp demographics, with an anthropological investigation of the operational practices of the Cheka and NKVD. This approach provides a foundation for understanding the evolution of the Gulag, the massive camp, exile, and forced labor system developed under Stalin. The thesis innovates by incorporating Civil War sources into the broader historiographical debate on the Gulag’s function and the intentions of its designers. It credentials a multilayered conceptual framework between economic, destructive, functionalist, and structuralist interpretations. It argues that while Soviet penal policy in the 1920s aimed for financial efficiency and modern rationality, Stalin’s next generation exploited the camps for their destructive and social engineering potential
The discourse of death in the PKK's ideology : a journey to fathom political violence and the fascination for death
No full textDefence date: 27 January 2025Examining Board: Prof. Olivier Roy (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Mehmet Gurses (University of Central Florida, external supervisor); Prof. Jeff Goodwin (New York University); Prof. Agnès Favier (European University Institute)In my doctoral dissertation, I explore why the discourse of death is so central to the ideology of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an avowedly Marxist organization. I examine how Kurdish society, deeply repressed and suffering from ontological insecurity, develops a collective desire for survival that transcends the individual wishes of its members. This desire is internalized by Kurdish individuals through a persistent, negative feeling, a background hum—which I dub the “hegemonic whisper”—constantly reminding them that something is wrong with their society. Throughout the thesis, Kurdish society’s desire to survive is conceptualized through the discourse of kurdayeti (Kurdishness). I have shown in my research that this discourse is articulated in Kurdish literature and popular culture and by non-PKK Kurds as well. The fact that the same discourse is articulated by PKK ex-fighters, activists, and in PKK ideology is a strong argument that the PKK is penetrated by Kurdish society or, as I say, the PKK has been “Kurdified” because this discourse did not exist in the early stages of the PKK. This way I have answered one of the hotly debated questions in Kurdish studies (not to mention Kurdish politics): Is the PKK a Marxist organization or a nationalist one? I also demonstrate that the discourse of death in PKK ideology and among ex-PKK fighters mirrors similar themes among non-PKK Kurds, and in Kurdish literature and popular culture. In this way, I argue that fascination for death stems from the ontological insecurity in Kurdish society and the broader discourse of Kurdishness, existing prior to joining the PKK. This challenges the prevailing notion in radical studies that politicized fascination for death is created by organizations or their environments. Additionally, I explore the sociological factors—such as class, education, and gender—that shape this politicized fascination for death in Kurdish society