Giovanni PICKER (Italian)
Country of residence
Hungary
Brief introduction
My research is positioned within the broad field of Urban Studies, including mainly urban sociology and urban anthropology, with a focus on race/racism ethnicity and nationalism; migration; comparative and historical sociology; social theory; ethnography, and Romani Studies.
My Laurea degree thesis in Politics and Cultural Sociology (BA+MA, University of Milan 2004) was an ethnography of the relations between the urban space, everyday group-making and international urban governance in the post-war divided city of Mitrovica, Northern Kosovo. Critically framed within current debates on nationalism, ethnicity and multiculturalism, my Ph.D. (Urban Sociology, University of Milan-Bicocca 2009) was a comparative ethnography of the urban governance of three stigmatized 'Gypsy neighborhoods' in 'Eastern' and 'Western' Europe (case studies in Romania and Italy).
In 2010 at FIERI (Turin) I took part in the research "(Roma)nians between Turin and departure contexts. Everyday life, representations and public policies" that resulted in a homonymous report. I have since then expanded my work towards a Europe-wide comparative ethnography of the governance of marginalized and stigmatized Roma urban areas, first at ISPMN in Cluj, later at the Centre for Ethnicity and Citizenship, University of Bristol, and finally at the HSE Centre for Advanced Studies, Moscow. I am now completing the work at the CEU Institute for Advanced Study, Budapest.
Over the last seven years I've been taking part in a number of European projects, including a three-year Marie Curie Training Programme on Romany Studies (2007-2009) and the EC-FP7 RESPECT project (2011); I am currently Junior Researcher in the SPAREX project (2011-2014).
Education
Ph.D. in Urban Studies, Sociology Department, University of Milan-Bicocca (2009)
Academic profile
Publications
(2014) “That neighbourhood is an ethnic bomb!” The emergence of an urban governance apparatus in Western Europe’, European Urban and Regional Studies. Online First. DOI: 10.1177/0969776413502659.
(2014) ‘Abnormalising minorities. The state and expert knowledge addressing the Roma in Italy’, Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power (second author: Gabriele Roccheggiani), 21(2): 185-201.
(2013) ‘“Țiganu-i țigan”: Verbal Icons and Urban Marginality in a Post-socialist European City’, Civilisations. Revue internationale d’anthropologie e de sciences humaines, 62(1): 51-70.
(2013) ‘Sedentarisation and “the right to nomadism”. The urban and regional fabric of nomad camps in Italy (1967-1995)’, Zeitgeshichte, 40(5): 276-286.
Keywords
Urban marginality; Segregation; Race, ethnicity and nationalism; Policy making.
Contact
giovanni.picker@gmail.com
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