Irene Peano (PhD, Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge) is a research fellow 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 has focused 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. Among other issues, she analyses the role of space in such mechanisms, also by reference to planetary urbanisation and its genealogies in Italy’s agro-industrial districts, where urban forms beyond the city are developing. 

The camp, the zone, and sovereign sediments: Querying paradigms through the politics of Made-in-Italy agribusiness operations. Anthropological Theory, 24(3), 258-281. 2024.

Before and after Fascist bonifiche: Spaces of occlusion and recursion in contemporary Tavoliere, in P. Heywood (ed.), New anthropologies of Italy: Politics, history and culture. London: Berghan, July 2024.