I was born some years after the 1973 Arab–Israeli War/the oil crisis/the collapse of the Bretton Wood system. I was raised in economically booming and politically shady Milan, where at public universities I obtained an MA in Political Sciences in 2004, and a PhD in Urban Sociology five years later. I have then held precarious posts, paid by research grants and fellowships, at Fieri (Turin); ISPMN, (Cluj-Napoca); HSE (Moscow); IAS-CEU (Budapest); EUV (Frankfurt-Oder) and the University of Birmingham, before landing on a tenure at Glasgow University in 2018.

My work is mostly influenced by the surroundings of Milan Central Station, where I grew up, and by a combination of jazz and klezmer (mostly RJC), where I like to hide.