I am a Research Associate at the University of Sussex, where I am also working as Doctoral Tutor since September 2017. I have completed my PhD in Social Anthropology here, in May 2018. I was supervised by Prof. Elizabeth Harrison and Prof. Evan Killick. My PhD research was part of the broader “Shadows of Slavery in West Africa and Beyond. A Historical Anthropology” (http://shadowsofslavery.org/) project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC grant 313737) and implemented by the University of Milan – Bicocca. The coordinator of this project, Prof. Alice Bellagamba, co-supervised my research. My research explored the legacies of slavery in the Guéra region, in central Chad. Based on a nine months fieldwork and focusing on a group locally discriminated as made of slave- descendants, my research goes beyond the analysis of legacies of slavery as an issue between former master and slaves. It shows how dynamics and issues related to the memories of slavery are contingent and may be better analysed as outcome of specific political reforms, rather than just considered as survival of pre-existing hierarchies.

Before starting the PhD programme, I have achieved an MA in Anthropology at the University of Milan – Bicocca in 2009, with a dissertation on the role of traditional authorities in development project in the district of Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana; and an MSc in Anthropology and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2012, with a dissertation on the capacity of peasants to affect rural development policies in Korhogo district, Ivory Coast. I have also worked in different NGO projects in Chad between 2010 and 2013, spending there a total of 16 months.