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Areas of expertise
Biography
Football, languages, literature, architecture and cinema have led my interest towards the modern era in European history. I’m especially interested in the cultural history and the experiences of individuals during this era. History of Italy has interested me even more since my exchange period in Pavia, and already in my master’s thesis, I studied the experiences of two Finnish writers, V. A. Koskenniemi and Tatu Vaaskivi, during their stays in Fascist Italy. That left me enthusiastic to further study the same era, and in the dissertation I focus on it through the experiences of Italians themselves.
Research
In my doctoral dissertation I study the construction of local and regional identities in the Italian football stadiums between 1929 and 1943.
Football’s popularity exploded in the aftermath of World War I. Since the late 1920’s the Fascist regime aimed to take advantage of it through propaganda. Together with the success of the Italian national football team, this led to the foundation of the national football league and to the large wave of stadium-construction. Meanwhile, the local patriotic attitudes, known by the notion of campanilismo, took a central role in the football’s early supporter culture. By focusing on the lived space of the new stadiums, the dissertation studies the societal pluralism behind the totalitarian system.