Marco Gardini has conducted field researches in Togo from 2006 to 2012, regarding accusations of witchcraft, access to land, exploitation of agricultural work and the relationship between the resolution of land conflicts and the renegotiation of the legitimacy of the local and national authorities. In 2013 he received his Doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Milan-Bicocca, in co-supervision with the University of Bayreuth.

Marco has been research fellow at the University of Milan-Bicocca from 2014 to 2018, where he collaborated with the SWAB project (Shadows of Slavery in West Africa and Beyond, ERC-GRANT 313737). His works has been focusing on the legacy of slavery in Madagascar, the biographic trajectories of ex-slaves and their descendants and the continuities (and discontinuities) between the old and new forms of social marginalization and exploitation of labor.