Laura CERASI

Laura CERASI is an Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca' Foscari University of Venice. She graduated in History from Ca' Foscari in 1988 with a thesis on Italian nationalism under Luisa Mangoni's supervision, earned her doctorate at University of Roma Tre, and held postdoctoral/research positions at University of Padua and UCL London. Her career includes teaching roles at Universities of Udine, Trieste, Verona, and Genoa before joining Ca' Foscari permanently in 2015. She coordinates the 'Studi di Storia' series and sits on the editorial board of 'Studi Storici'.

• Key research areas: Fascist political cultures, corporatism, labor history, cultural institutions, and state-labor dynamics in 20th-century Italy/Europe
• Current projects: Upcoming Routledge monograph on Italian fascism (2025), historical analysis of corporative populism, and interwar Italian-British imperial comparisons

Her work examines:

• Right-wing ideologies and Catholic-labor intersections in fascist corporatism
• Transformations of the state through mass democracy and labor frameworks
• Memory studies in post-industrial urban contexts like Marghera

Notable publications explore:

• Fascist constitutional debates (Gentile's ethical state)
• Salvemini's anti-fascist historiography
• Imperial rhetoric and Anglophilia/anglophobia in Italian colonialism
• Corporatist projects across liberal and fascist eras