Francesca Rolandi, Visiting Fellowship 2024/25

Short biography

Francesca Rolandi is an resarch associate at the University of Florence and a member of the ERC project “Humanitarianism and Mediterranean Europe: A Transnational and Comparative History (1945-1990)”. As a research fellow, she was part of the ERC project  Unlikely refuge? Refugees and citizens in East-Central Europe in the 20th century, hosted by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the ERC project Post-war transitions in gendered perspective: the case of the North-Eastern Adriatic Region, hosted by the University of Ljubljana. She previously held postdoctoral fellowships and positions at the University of Rijeka, the University of British Columbia Okanagan, and the Italian Institute for Historical Studies.

Her interests range from the cultural and social history of the Upper Adriatic and post-Yugoslav area to the history of humanitarianism and migration in 20th-century Europe.

Visiting Fellowship June 22 – 30, 2025

Motivations

I am currently working on specific aspects of humanitarian initiatives performed in socialist Yugoslavia. In particular, I am examining Yugoslavia as a site of encounter between patterns, preoccupations, and understandings that originated, respectively, in the Eastern and the Western blocs. Moreover, I plan to explore the dynamic interplay between state and non-state actors when humanitarian engagement is at stake. In this respect, the case study of Slovenia in the 1980s looks promising. During my stay at the INZ, I look forward to establishing connections with colleagues who deal with the social history of Slovenia /Yugoslavia.  Moreover, I will conduct research at the Slovenian State Archives and the National and University Library of Slovenia.

Selected biography

“Coping with Post-Imperial Fluidity. Refugees from Fiume between Different State Authorities (1919-1921),” Contemporanea, 1, 2025, 35-58.

“Yugoslavia Is (Not) a Refugee Country? Refugees Between Transit and Integration in an Ever-Changing Socialist State.” Nationalities Papers 53, no. 2 (2025): 468–88. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2025.6.

“The 1976 Friuli Earthquake and Yugoslav Aid: Practicing Solidarity, Reframing Hierarchies and Looking for New Markets”, Contemporanea, 2, 2024, 304-309.

“Genuinely Anti-Communist, Tactically Anti-Fascist. Framing Refugeedom in Interwar Yugoslavia (1918–1935)”, Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju, 3, 2023, 7-32.

“A Man Without a Corner of His Own. Domestic Migration, Social Inequalities and Housing in Post-Second World War Rijeka”, The Journal of Migration History, 9, 1, 2023, 52-77.

“Refugees in the Yugoslav Space: An Overview of the State of the Art” – coauthored with Pieter Troch, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 71, 4, 2022, 587-617.

“Female Public Employees During a Post-Imperial Transition: Gender, Politics and Labour in Fiume After the First World War”, Contemporary European History, 2022, 1-14.

“Redefining Citizenship After Empire: The Rights to Welfare, to Work and to Remain in a Post-Habsburg World”, coauthored with Dominique K. Reill and Ivan Jeličić, The Journal of Modern History, 94, 2, 2022, 326-362.

“Con ventiquattromila baci. L’influenza della cultura di massa italiana in Jugoslavia (1955-1965”, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2015. [Dvadeset četiri hiljade poljubaca. Uticaj italijanske popularne kulture u Jugoslaviji (1955-1965), Beograd, Geopoetika, 2022 – revised and updated translation]