Fabio Simonetti

Dr. Fabio Simonetti is a Lecturer in European Politics and History at Brunel University London, affiliated with the Department of Politics and History within the College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences. He specializes in the social history of the Second World War, with a focus on military occupations, particularly the British occupation of Italy from 1943 to 1947. His research explores the dynamics between British soldiers and Italian civilians, drawing on egodocuments such as diaries, letters, and oral histories.

• PhD in Italian Studies – University of Reading (2021)
• MA in Modern and Contemporary History – Università di Roma 'Sapienza'
• BA in Modern and Contemporary History – Università di Roma 'Sapienza'

Dr. Simonetti's research focuses on the intersection of social history, occupation studies, memory, and gender. He investigates how war and occupation shape everyday lives and how these experiences are remembered, particularly through British and Italian perspectives. His work emphasizes the nuanced and often overlooked social realities of Allied occupation in Italy, challenging the myth of purely liberatory narratives.

His major forthcoming publication, Encounters in Wartime Italy: A Social History of Invasion, Liberation, and Occupation (Oxford University Press, 2025), provides a comprehensive analysis of soldier-civilian interactions during the Allied campaign in Italy. The work draws on a wide range of primary sources, including official records, memoirs, and personal accounts, to reconstruct the complex coexistence shaped by power imbalances, bartering, labor, violence, and intimate relationships.

• 2022 Society for Italian Studies Postgraduate Prize

Dr. Simonetti previously taught Italian and European history at the University of Reading. His research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and conducted in collaboration with the Imperial War Museums. He has contributed to scholarly discourse on the history and memory of both German and Allied occupations of Italy.