Welcome! I am a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. My research focuses on the emergence and evolution of political mobilization in 19th and 20th century Europe, examining the role of social, political, and economic institutions—such as political violence, religion, and repression—in shaping these dynamics.
In Fall 2024, I was a visiting scholar at Yale University. At the EUI, I led the Research Analytics Unit and co-organized the Comparative Politics Seminar Series. Prior to my doctoral studies, I worked as a Research Assistant at the Institutions and Political Economy Research Group (IPERG) at the University of Barcelona.
Work in progress
Ne parlons pas de l’Affair Dreyfus: Antisemitic riots and polarization in Fin de Siècle France (with Simon Hix)
[Abstract]
Research on contemporary riots finds either a backlash against the forces responsible for the riots or an increase in the salience of the issues raised by the rioters. These competing effects are often difficult to unpack. We study the effect of rightwing antisemitic riots in France in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair on the 1898 election. Combining historical municipal-level election data and novel information on the location of the riots, we find two main effects: 1) a backlash against the political forces responsible for the violence (a decline in electoral support for extreme right candidates); and 2) an increase in support for antisemitic candidates on the extreme left. These results suggest that riots against an ethnic minority can have multiple and contrasting effects, mobilizing voters both for and against the perpetrators of the violence, and that these effects need not be driven by media or political party framing.
Feather-Handed Fascists? Surveillance as a Signal of Bureaucratic Alignment (with Lorenzo Vicari and Andrea Xamo)
[Abstract]
Why do some bureaucrats under autocracy police more intensely than others? We investigate variation in autocratic policing by analysing the surveillance activity of provincial prefects in Fascist Italy (1922–1945). Linking newly digitised biographies of all 415 prefects to complete monthly records of police surveillance, we document that early affiliation with the ruling party predicts lower levels of coercive activity. In a Difference-in-Differences framework, we find that prefects who joined the Fascist Party prior to the March on Rome initiated approximately 25 per cent fewer surveillance files than non-members. We explore several competing mechanisms, including selection on competence, and find little to no empirical support for them. We further show that party-affiliated prefects achieved comparable job stability with lower surveillance levels. We highlight evidence consistent with a loyalty-signalling interpretation: prefects with less established partisan credentials engaged in more intensive policing to secure their positions. Our findings complement the theory on the loyalty-competence trade-off, underlying how stricter autocratic policing might be driven by loyalty-based career concerns, rather than ability or ideological inclinations.
Anglicans, Dissenters and Electoral Behavior in 19th century Great Britain (with Carles Boix and Guillem Riambau)
[Abstract]
This paper examines the religious origins of political parties in Great Britain. To that avail, we digitize all 19th century censuses at the most micro level (Parish level). We merge these datasets to all electoral results in the 19th century and to the March 30, 1851, Religious Census. The latter is the only census in UK’s history to tally attendances for every single church and chapel in all of England and Wales. Our results indicate that support for Tories (Whigs) was significantly stronger where the Anglican Church (New Dissent) was stronger. These results are robust to the inclusion of various sociodemographic controls, suggesting that religion had an influence on party support over and above social class or economic interest.
Other work
Temporary Disenfranchisement Revisited: A Report from the 2023 Montréal Replication Games on the Robustness of Recent Findings in the APSR (with Joris Frese, Alexandros Christos Gkotinakos, and Matthew Hepplewhite), I4R Discussion Paper Series, No. 87, Institute for Replication (I4R), s.l.
[Paper] [Repository]
