Andrea Annese
teaches History of Christianity at Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna. His main research topics are: Christian origins; Early Christian history and literature, first to the fifth centuries; and the Nag Hammadi Codices. He has published several volumes, including: Il Vangelo di Tommaso. Introduzione storico-critica (2019) and, with F. Berno, M. Fallica, M. Mantovani, Le origini cristiane. Testi e autori (secoli I–II) (2021). With A. Destro, M. Pesce et alii he has co-edited Texts, Practices, and Groups. Multidisciplinary Approaches to the History of Jesus’ Followers in the First Two Centuries (2017); with F. Berno and D. Tripaldi, he is the editor of I codici di Nag Hammadi. Prima traduzione italiana integrale (2024).
Edoardo Bressan
was Full Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism Sciences at the University of Macerata and is co-editor of the series ‘Spaces and Cultures of the 20th Century’ for Edizioni Università di Macerata. His studies and publications have concerned the history of welfare and health institutions in their evolution from the nineteenth century to the welfare systems and the ‘third sector’; the social culture of the Catholic world with reference to the position of the Christian Churches and the European debate from the 1930s to the 1960s; various events and figures of the Italian Catholic Church from the nineteenth century to the contemporary age.
Daniela Luigia (Gia) Caglioti
is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) and coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Global History and Governance of the Scuola Superiore Meridionale. She has published on nineteenth-century migration, minorities, social classes, and more recently on enemy aliens and citizenship between the Revolutionary Wars and World War I. Her publications include War and Citizenship: Enemy Aliens and National Belonging from the French Revolution to the First World War (2021), and Vite parallele. Una minoranza protestante nell’Italia dell’800 (2006).
Ester Capuzzo
Professor of Contemporary History at Sapienza University of Rome, deals with the history of Italian Jews with regard to the Risorgimento period and the Liberal age. She recently edited the monograph (2020–2021) for Zakhor: Rivista degli ebrei d’Italia, entitled Aspetti della vita ebraica tra Ottocento e Novecento. She is a member of the National Committees for the celebrations of the death of Leopoldo Franchetti and Sidney Sonnino, and curated the exhibition Risorgimento Italiano/Risorgimento Ebraico, held in the Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art (Jerusalem, 22 February-10 March 2005). Her most recent writings in Jewish history includes: ‘Ebrei a Roma dal Risorgimento alla breccia di Porta Pia (1848–1870)’ in F. Leoni and G. Calò (eds.), 1849–1871. Ebrei di Roma tra segregazione ed emancipazione/ The Jews of Rome between segregation and emancipation (2021); and ‘La fine del claustrum hebreorum’, in F. Anghelone, P. Piatti, and E. Tirone (eds.), La breccia di Porta Pia. Raccolta di studi nel 150° anniversario (1870–2020) (2021). In the portal Roma150anni (https://roma150.risviel.com/wp/, financed by the Lazio Region), she edited the section devoted to the Rome ghetto and Jewish families between 1870 and the 1930s.
is a scholar of contemporary Christianity, based at the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice. With a Ph.D. from the University of Reading and a Master’s degree from Padua and Ca’ Foscari, in 2016 she was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship to support her work on the origins of the Catholic charismatic movement. At the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, she studied the movement’s inception in the US from the 1960s to the 1980s, illuminating its ties to European Catholicism and the role of women. Her publications include work on the history of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, female Catholicism and its transnational developments, American Catholicism and Evangelicalism, and canonization in the Catholic Church.
Cecilia Dau Novelli
is Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Cagliari, where she teaches Contemporary History and the History of the Welfare State. She has worked on women’s history, social history and, for several years, the history of colonialism. Her publications include Nel segno dell’Empowerment femminile. Donne e democrazia in Italia e nel mondo (2007); and ‘La memoria e l’immaginario: l’altro Novecento delle donne italiane’, in Dalla parte della storia: Scritti in onore di Bartolo Gariglio (2021).
Vittorio De Marco
is Full Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Salento (Lecce). His main areas of interest are the history of the Catholic movement, in particular Luigi Sturzo and Catholic Action, the relationship between the State and the Church in the 20th century, and the social and religious history of southern Italy in modern and contemporary times. His latest publications include: Gio Ponti e la concattedrale di Taranto. Lettere al committente Guglielmo Motolese (1964–1979), (2020); ‘Santa Sede e guerra civile nel Libano durante i primi anni del pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II (1978–1985),’ Rivista italiana di storia internazionale 5.1 (2022): 71–98; Una storia senza tempo. Madre Carmela Prestigiacomo. Fondatrice dell’Istituto del Sacro Cuore del Verbo Incarnato (1858–1948) (2023).
Mario Del Pero
is Professor of International History at SciencesPo. He is the author or co-author of 9 books and of numerous articles on academic journals including The American Historical Review, The Journal of American History, Diplomatic History and Cold War History. Before joining SciencesPo he taught for 11 years at the University of Bologna. He has held fellowships and visiting professorships at Columbia University, New York University, The Graduate Institute of Geneva, the University of Edinburgh, SAIS-Johns Hopkins, the European University Institute, the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. He recently published a book for Cambridge University Press on the mission of the Texas-based Church of Christ in early post-World War II Italy.
Massimo Di Gioacchino
is a historian of the late modern transatlantic world. He received his Ph.D. in History in 2018 from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, in co-direction with the University of Notre Dame. Chair of the NYU-RomaTre Permanent Global Seminar, he currently serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor of American religious history at Lehman College, City University of New York. In Fall 2022 he served as the Tiro a Segno Visiting Professor in Italian American Studies at New York University. His main research interests concern the migration of peoples and ideas between Europe and the United States between 1776 and 1945, with a focus on Italian immigration to the US and American Protestant missions to Italy.
is a Waldensian pastor, Full Professor of Old Testament at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome, and President of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy. He has published widely in his two main research areas, new criticism of the Pentateuch and Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Mark P. Hutchinson
is Professor of History, and University Historian, at Western Sydney University in Sydney, Australia. An intellectual historian of note, he has published widely on the history of Education, theory of history, new religious movements, and global evangelicalism/ pentecostalism. His most recent works include The Twentieth Century: Themes in a Global Context, Volume V in The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions (2018); (with C. Rocha and K. Openshaw) Australasian Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements: Arguments from the Margins (2020); and (with A. Atherstone and J. Maiden). Transatlantic Charismatic Renewal, c.1950–2000 (2021).
Simone Maghenzani
is Dame Marylin Strathern College Associate Professor in History, and Fellow and Director of Studies at Girton College, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. He is an early modernist and works on European religious history between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. On the Italian Protestants in the Risorgimento, he has edited: Il protestantesimo Italiano nel Risorgimento. Influenze, miti, identità (2012).
Marta Margotti
teaches Contemporary History at the University of Turin. In her research she has dealt with the history of journalism, social history, and history of Christianity. She has published many studies on social Catholicism in Italy and French in the nineteenth and 20th centuries, Protestant youth, the relationship between religious phenomena and secularization, and the 1968 protests. Among her books there are: Preti e operai. La Mission de Paris dal 1943 al 1954 (2000); Religioni e secolarizzazioni. Ebraismo, cristianesimo e islam nel mondo globale (2012). She edited the books La rivoluzione del Concilio (2017); and Cattolici del Sessantotto (2019).
Renato Moro
is an Emeritus Professor of Contemporary History at Roma Tre University. His research is focused on the relationship between politics and religion, political cultures, Italian fascism, and peace history. He has coordinated national and international research projects on these topics. He is co-editor of the journal Mondo contemporaneo, president of CIVITAS and of the National Edition of Aldo Moro’s Works. Among his books: La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1979); La Chiesa e lo sterminio degli ebrei (2002; sp. transl. 2004); Aldo Moro negli anni della FUCI (2008), Il mito dell’Italia cattolica. Nazione, religione e cattolicesimo negli anni del fascismo (2021); Storia di una maestra del Sud che fu la madre di Aldo Moro (2022).
Paolo Naso
was Professor of Political Science at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, and Lecturer in political science and sociology disciplines at the Masters in Theology and Intercultural Diakonia at the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome and in Religion, Politics and Global Society, at the University of Padua. Author of several volumes on the topic of religions in the post-secular public space, he collaborates with
Marco Novarino
was Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Turin, originally studied the history of the workers’ movement, particularly the anarchist movement. He later specialised in the history of contemporary Spain and the relations between Freemasonry and political and religious movements and secular associations. He is currently working on the history of evangelical Protestantism and on this subject has recently published: ‘Il metodismo italiano e i rapporti con gli ambienti laici e anticlericali’, in Metodisti in Italia (2024); and ‘La stampa valdese tra informazione ed evangelizzazione’, in the Storia dei Valdesi, vol. IV (2024).
Paul J. Palma
is an Adjunct Professor at Regent University School of Divinity and SUM Bible College and Theological Seminary. He has written and presented widely on topics in Christian history and theology. He is the author of Italian American Pentecostalism and the Struggle for Religious Identity (2020), Embracing our Roots: Rediscovering the Value of Faith, Family, and Tradition (2021), and Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States: Migrations, Missions, and Mobility (2022).
Raffaella Perin
is Associate Professor of history of Christianity at the Catholic University of Milan. PhD in History of Christianity (2010, University of Padua), and a PhD in Modern History (2016 – Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and École Pratique des Hautes Études). She was postdoctoral researcher at Ca’ Foscari University Venice, research fellow at the Foundation for Religious Studies John XXIII of Bologna, grant-holder at the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome and at KU Leuven. Her studies focus on forms of Catholic anti-Semitism and anti-Protestantism in the twentieth century; the anti-Modernism of the Roman Curia under the pontificate of Pius X; Church and media; and the diplomacy and politics of the Vatican during the Second World War. She is the author of The Popes on Air: The History of Vatican Radio from Its Origins to World War II (2024).
Giancarlo Rinaldi
taught History of Christianity at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. He is mainly interested in the relations between Christians and ancient society from an intellectual and political perspective. He has also written on the Wesleyan tradition and the history of Italian Pentecostalism. With his Biblia gentium (1989), he inaugurated research on the circulation of the Scriptures among pagan authors; Cristianesimi nell’antichità (2008) is a general handbook that deals with the Christian origins to the advent of Islam. His most recent book Roma e i cristiani (2023) reviews the history of ancient Christian communities by relating it to the policies of the governors of the Roman provinces.
Massimo Rubboli
is former Professor of North American History at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Genoa. His publications include: I protestanti (2007); I Battisti (2011); La Riforma protestante tra mito e memoria storica (2020); Alle origini della storia americana. I Padri pellegrini tra storia e mito (2020); La guerra santa di Putin e Kirill. Il fattore religioso nel conflitto russo-ucraino (2022); Tempo (quasi) scaduto.
Daniela Saresella
teaches Contemporary History at the University of Milan. She is a scholar of the Catholic world in the 20th century, focusing her research on Modernism, conciliar Catholicism, and the interaction between faith and politics: topics on which she has published many essays and books. Her most recent volumes include: Catholics and Communists in Twentieth-Century Italy. Between Conflict and Dialogue (2020); and L’ultima DC. Il cattolicesimo democratico e la fine dell’unità politica (1974–1994) (2024). She edited the special issue of Memoria e Ricerca 28.60 (2019) Chiesa cattolica e mondo protestante nel Novecento.
Marco Soresina
is Professor of Contemporary History and coordinator of the PhD program in Historical Studies, at the Università degli studi di Milano. Recent publications include: Italy Before Italy: Institutions, Conflicts and Political Hopes in the Italian States, 1815–1860 (2018); ‘Testimonies to the History of Crime: “The Italian Police Memoir, 1861–2014”,’ Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 25.1 (2021); ‘Experiences of political mobilization and popular participation in Milan’s working-class neighbourhoods: 1945–1967,’ Urban History 49.4 (2022); ‘Milan riots of 1853: history and remembrance,’ Journal of Modern Italian Studies 28.1 (2023).
Mario Toscano
has been Full Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Political Science of the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. Together with Renato Moro, he has been editor since the foundation (2005) of the journal Mondo contemporaneo. Rivista di storia. He has published numerous essays and volumes on Italian history, contemporary anti-Semitism and 20th century Italian Judaism. His most recent publications include Ebrei e ebraismo nell’Italia del Novecento (2019) and the edition, together with Angelo M. Piattelli, of Memorie di un rabbino italiano. Le agende di David Prato (1922–1943) (2022).
Giovanni Battista Varnier
(†2022) was Full Professor in the Department of Law at the University of Genoa, where he taught Ecclesiastical and Canon Law. At the University of Genoa, he was Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and President of the Library. He was an expert on relations between the State and the Church, ecclesiastical institutions and religious minorities. On these topics he published many volumes and contributions. Among these: Gli ultimi governi liberali e la questione romana (1976); Le minoranze religiose in Italia e il fenomeno religioso nella trasformazione dell’ordinamento giuridico (1997); and the recent, Dio e patria. I cattolici genovesi nella Grande Guerra (2019).
Giorgio Vecchio
has taught Contemporary History and History of Contemporary Europe at the University of Parma, as well as at the Catholic University and the IULM University in Milan. He is president of the scientific committee of the Istituto Alcide Cervi and that of the Fondazione don Primo Mazzolari. His most recent publications include: Pagine per salvare dall’oblio 150 anni di storia (2020); Mazzolari e la Prima guerra mondiale. Dalla trincea alla parrocchia, edited by him (2019); and Il soffio dello Spirito. Cattolici nelle Resistenze europee (2022). With Guido Formigoni and Paolo Pombeni he published Storia della Democrazia Cristiana 1943–1993 (2023).
studied evangelical theology at the universities of Tübingen and Marburg, where he obtained his doctoral degree in 1999 and his lecturer’s qualification in 2006. He was ordained pastor in 2000 in the Evangelical-Lutheran church of Württemberg. From 2006, he has been teaching Church history in the Waldensian School of Theology in Rome. His particular research interests are Medieval Waldensianism, sixteenth century Reformation and the history of Italian Protestantism.
Paolo Zanini
is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Milan. His research, mainly in the field of religious history, concerns in particular: the Holy See’s Middle East policy and Jewish-Christian relations; the question of religious freedom and Catholic anti-Protestantism; and the progressive circles of Italian Catholicism in the second half of the 20th century. He has published numerous articles and four monographs on these subjects, including Il «pericolo protestante». Chiesa e cattolici italiani di fronte alla questione della libertà religiosa (1922–1955) (2019).