Irene Peano

Assistant researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon

Irene Peano (PhD, Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge) is assistant researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. She previously held postdoctoral positions at the same institute as well as at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Bologna, where she was a Marie Curie Fellow, and a visiting professorship at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB). Her work focuses on labour and migration (with particular reference to sexual and agricultural work) across Italy, Nigeria and Eastern Europe. She explores mechanisms of control, containment, extraction and resistance, through methods which place engagement, solidarity and participation at the centre of her research. Currently, she is working on a monograph that investigates the material, spatial, symbolic and affective stratifications of racism and more generally of mobility and labour control, and of forms of resistance against them, by reference to the development of Italian agro-capitalism since the late 18th century and with a particular emphasis on space. With Marta Macedo and Colette Le Petitcorps she has co-authored a forthcoming volume titled “Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives”.

Selected publications

Spectres of Eurafrica in an Italian agroindustrial enclave. e-flux Architecture, Series on ‘The coloniality of infrastructure’ 

Turbulences in the encampment archipelago: Conflicting mobilities between migration, labour and logistics in Italian agri-food enclaves. Mobilities 16:2, 212-223, 2021.

Within and against racial segregation – notes from Italy’s encampment archipelago. Lateral 10(2), Forum: The Corona A(e)ffects: Radical Affectivities of Dissent and Hope, a cura di M. Fumanti e E. Zambelli, 2021.


Back to the team