STOREP 2025: Invited Speakers
ECONOMIES AND TERRITORIES
FROM THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS PERSPECTIVE
22nd Annual STOREP Conference, June 12-14, 2025
Università degli Studi del Molise
Dipartimento di Bioscienze e Territorio, via Duca degli Abruzzi 67, 86039 Termoli (CB)
INVITED SPEAKERS
The keynote speaker of the 22nd Annual STOREP Conference is ALESSANDRA MEZZADRI.
Alessandra is a Feminist and Development Political Economist of labour and social reproduction (website).
She read Economics, Political Economy and Business at La Sapienza Università di Roma, and Development, Gender, and Labour Studies at SOAS. Her first research project focused on the ‘making’ of cheap labour in India’s garment industry, its labour regimes, and productive/reproductive links to the informal economy. Her first book, the Sweatshop Regime, has excellent reviews, including in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI), Antipode, Global Labour Journal, ILR Review, Economic & Political Weekly. She has written on labour grievances in the Sweatshop Regime in the ILO report The Social Life of Industrial Disputes.
She also works on Marxian and feminist political economy theories and methods and the global political economy of work. Her work on the social reproduction of value has been featured in journals like Radical Philosophy, Antipode, Environment and Planning F. Her work on methods has led to her second book project, the edited volume Marx in the Field, which is very positively reviewed in Marx and Philosophy Review of Books, Capital and Class, Progress in Development Studies, and British Journal of Industrial Relations. Her work on the global political economy of work has led to her third book project, the co-edited Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work. Alessandra has worked extensively on the political economy of COVID-19 from a feminist lens centred on social reproduction and intersecting class, gender, and race inequalities. This work features in journals like Organization, and Development and Change, and is inspiring her fourth book project.
Alessandra has collaborated with international organisations, including ILO and UNIDO; with INGO and labour unions, including ActionAid, Labour Behind the Label, War on Want, SEWA and Cividep India; and with global development research or education centres like UNU-WIDER and the Global Labour University. She is co-founder of the Labour Transfer summer school. She is Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies.
At SOAS, Alessandra teaches on theories of development; political economy of trade and inequalities; global supply-chain capitalism, work, ecology; feminist political economy & gender and development; and contemporary India. She welcomes PhD applications in the areas of India’s informal economy; global supply-chain capitalism, work, and development; global feminist political economy and social reproduction; labour standards and modern slavery in global industries.
She is currently working at a manuscript on Feminist Cartographies of Social Reproduction and Global Development as Social Factory.
INET-STOREP joint initiative on “When Countries Get Older: Historical Trends and Spatial Heterogeneities” (sponsored by Age.it, jointly organised with Young Scholar Initiative)
Federico Benassi (Università di Napoli Federico II). Associate Professor of Demography at the University of Naples Federico II, Department of Political Science. He is a member of the Teaching Board of the national PhD programme in Earth Processes and Management of Resources and Risks for a Resilient Society and Territory (DINDISTEGEO). His research interests include spatial demography and, more broadly, spatial approaches to population studies. He has published in several leading journals, including International Migration Review, Population, Space and Place, Population Research and Policy Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Regional Studies. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the PRIN 2022 – PNRR research project “Foreign Population and Territory: Integration Processes, Demographic Imbalances, Challenges and Opportunities for the Social and Economic Sustainability of Different Local Contexts (For. Pop. Ter.)”, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Spatial Demography (Springer).
Roberto Impicciatore (Università di Bologna). Associate Professor of Demography and Director of the First Cycle Degree in International Development and Cooperation. He is Vice President of the Italian Association for Population Studies (AISP-SIS). He is a member of the Teaching Board of the national PhD programme in Life Course Research (PHD-LCR) and of the PhD in Economic Sociology, Organization and Labour (ESOL) at the University of Milan. He also serves on the editorial boards of _neodemos.info_ and the IUSSP online news magazine, and is Vice President of the Neodemos Association. His research primarily focuses on internal and international migration, family dynamics, and life course studies in Europe. His work has been published in leading international journals. He is currently involved in several research projects on migration, geography, and social inequality. He is also Principal Investigator of the task _”Life courses in old age: Retirement, family and residential trajectories”_ within the PNRR project _”Ageing Well in an Ageing Society (AGE-IT)”_.
Francesco Scalone (Università di Bologna). Professor of Demography at the University of Bologna (since 2023). He is also an external research fellow of the Center for Economic Demography, Lund University (Sweden). His research deals with historical demography covering mortality, fertility, and migration. His articles have been published in leading demography journals, including Demography, Population Studies, European Journal of Population. Most of his research involves longitudinal micro-level data. He is president of the Italian Society of Historical Demography (SIDeS) since 2021 and was editor-in-chief of Popolazione e Storia. He is Associate Editor of Genues and member of the Population and Environment editorial board. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the PRIN 2022 – PNRR research project “ Weather and Cimate Vulnerability in Italian Demographic History”.
Cecilia Tomassini (Università del Molise). Professor in Demography at Molise University, where she is a member of the Board of Directors. She serves as Scientific Coordinator for Molise University and a member of the Board of Directors of the project “Age-It: Ageing Well in an Ageing Society), funded by PNNR. She has been president of the Italian Association for Population Studies and Secretary General of the Italian Statistical Society. She served as a Member of the CNEL, appointed by the President of the Republic. She is a member of several national and international research groups on population ageing, especially looking at the role of the family and support network for older people. Her research interests focus on intergenerational transfers, proximity and living arrangements; effects of past demographic events on older individuals’ care; population ageing processes and dynamics within the Italian context and in a comparative perspective; grandparents and grandparenting.