Dr Fernanda Gallo

BA MA PHD

College position:

Associate Professor in History and Politics                       
Fellow and Director of Studies in History and Politics

Dr Fernanda Gallo
Dr Fernanda Gallo

I am an historian of Modern Italy and the Mediterranean with a particular interest in transnational intellectual exchanges across the Mediterranean and the interconnections between Northern and Southern European political thought in the long nineteenth century.

My first book, Dalla patria alla Stato. Bertrando Spaventa, una biografia intellettuale (Laterza, 2013) [From Patria to the State: an Intellectual Biography of Bertrando Spaventa] looks at the intellectual biography of the main exponent of nineteenth-century Italian Hegelianism, focusing in particular on the political context of the Risorgimento from 1810s to 1880s.

My second monograph, Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2024), is the story of a generation of intellectuals and politicians born at the start of the nineteenth century, the majority of them from Southern Italy, who experienced the collapse of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and the dissolution of the common cultural and political space of Southern Italy, and who helped to forge modern Italian political thought. The book traces the reception and transformation of Hegel's ideas in Italy and how they were reworked into political practices.


I am currently working on my new project on the revolutions in Southern Europe between 1780s and 1860s (Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal), exploring the interconnections between constitutions, liberalism and imperial dominations in the region from a gender perspective.

I have studied, researched and worked in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. After graduating at the University of Naples Federico II, I have spent research periods at the University of Heidelberg and Tuebingen and attained my PhD at the University of Lugano (Switzerland) in 2015. Before joining the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge in 2019, I have worked at Queen Mary University of London and at the University of Bath. My research has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici and the Baggiolini Foundation.
 
I am involved in several international research projects such as "SPAZId’TALIA. Material and immaterial spatiality of the Italian national construction from the Cisalpine Republic to the end of Fascism", in collaboration with the École française de Rome (Jan 2022 - Dec 2026); the SINERGIA project "Milan and Ticino (1796-1848). Shaping spatiality of a European Capital", funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (July 2018 - August 2022); and the Research Network for the History of the Idea of Europe. At Cambridge, I coordinate the Mediterranean History Research Cluster (2021-2024). I am also member of the board of the Institute for the Study of Ideas of Europe and founding member of the Society for Political Studies.
Teaching And Professional Interests

For undergraduates, in Part I, Dr Gallo lectures for paper 17 (19th-century European history) and paper 18 (20th-century European history), and in Part II, I teach the Specified Subject "Rethinking Europe from the Mediterranean shores, 1796-1914" (paper 24). She supervises for papers 17, 18, 19 and 20.

At the MPhil level, she teaches an option on 'The Modern Mediterranean' for the Modern European and World History MPhils.

Awards

Appointed by the Italian Minister of Cultural Activities as a member of the National Committee for the celebration of the Bicentenary of the birth of Bertrando Spaventa (1817-2017

Links to online publications, articles or other work

Key publications

Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900, Cambridge University Press (Ideas in Context), September 2024: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/history/history-ideas-and-intellectual-history/hegel-and-italian-political-thought-practice-ideas-18321900?format=HB
 
 
Gli hegeliani di Napoli. Il Risorgimento e la ricezione di Hegel in Italia, La Scuola di Pitagora editrice, Napoli, 2020
 
Dalla Patria allo Stato. Bertrando Spaventa, una biografia intellettuale, Roma: Laterza, 2013
 
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'The United States of Europe and the ‘East(s)’: Giuseppe Mazzini, Carlo Cattaneo, and Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso', in M. Hewitson and J. Vermeiren (eds.), Europe and the EastHistorical Ideas of Eastern and Southeast Europe, 1789-1989, Routledge, 2023 https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003120131-9/united-states-europe-east-fernanda-gallo
 
'Ideas of Europe and the (Modern) Mediterranean', in F. Gallo and M. D'Auria, Mediterranean Europe(s): Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores, Routledge, 2022
 
‘A transnational perspective on Constant’s Commentaire sur l’ouvrage de Filangieri and the Risorgimento, 1826-1860’, in T. David, P. Eichenberger, L. Haller, T. Straumann, C. Wirth (eds.), Transnationale Geschichte der Schweiz - Histoire transnationale de la Suisse, Zurich, Chronos Verlag 2020

with Axel Körner, ‘Challenging Intellectual Hierarchies. Hegel in Risorgimento Political Thought: An Introduction', Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 24/2 (2019).

‘The Rise of the Ethical State in Italy: Neapolitan Hegelians and Risorgimento Political Thought, 1848-1876’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 24/2 (2019).

‘The Shaping of European Modernities: The Renaissance and the Neapolitan Hegelianism, 1848- 1862’, History, 103/356 (2018)

Other publications


'La costruzione dell’identità nazionale e le interpretazioni del Rinascimento nell’hegelismo napoletano', in G. Vacca and M. Musté (eds.), 'Bertrando Spaventa tra coscienza nazionale e filosofia europea', Rome, Viella, 2018

‘La sfida alla “Supremazia Protestante”: Le origini della modernità e l’Hegelismo napoletano’, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, n. 3, 2017

‘Gli Hegeliani di Napoli e il Risorgimento. Bertrando Spaventa e Francesco De Sanctis a confronto, 1848-1862’, LEA. Lingue e Letterature d’Oriente e d’Occidente, n. 6, 2017

‘Francesco De Sanctis interprete del Rinascimento’, Rivista di Letteratura italiana, n. 1, 2017

‘Philosophical revolution and the shaping of European consciousness: Bertrando Spaventa’s “La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea”’, Phenomenology and Mind, n. 8, 2015

Ethos Repubblicano e Pensiero Meridiano [Republican Ethos and Meridian Thought], edited with F. Frediani Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 2011
 
Il manoscritto “De Anima” di Bertrando Spaventa’, Logos. Rivista di filosofia, n. 6, 2011

‘Introduzione: Ethos Repubblicano e Pensiero Meridiano’, with F. Frediani, in F. Gallo and F. Frediani (eds.), Ethos Repubblicano e Pensiero Meridiano, Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 2011.

‘Dalla religione civile al sentimento religioso: il Commentaire sur l’ouvrage de Filangieri di Benjamin Constant, in F. Gallo and F. Frediani Ethos repubblicano e pensiero meridiano, Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 2011

‘Dialogo intorno all’educazione civica’, in R. Forlenza and I. Belloni, Questioni civiche. Forme, simboli e confini della cittadinanza, Reggio Emilia, Diabasis, 2010
Department

Faculty Of History

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