Dr Giulia Casentini

Giulia Casentini (she/her) is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology. She has a BA in History (Venice 'Cà Foscari'), an MA in Anthropology and Ethnology (Rome 'La Sapienza') and a PhD in Anthropology, Ethnology and Social Sciences at the University of Siena (Italy). She was post-doc research fellow at the University of Pavia (Italy) and at SOAS, Department of Development Studies, with a UKRI/GCR funded project called MIDEQ (Migration for Development and Equality) Research Hub.

Giulia Casentini is an anthropologist with more than 10 years fieldwork experience in West Africa and Italy. She explored various topics, like border construction in Africa, colonial violence and local resistance; land access, political movements and identity construction processes in the postcolony; West African regional historical networks of mobility and diaspora formations; remittances and return communities, with particular interest on failed returns. She has focused on the crossing of the Mediterranean frontier, the transit through Libya, trafficking in persons, smuggling and the gendered dimension of the access to social care services in Italy. In the last three years, she has been working at SOAS in an interdisciplinary research project on migration, development and inequalities in South-South trajectories (https://www.mideq.org/en/), with particular focus on poverty, income inequality and gender inequality in three African migration corridors (Burkina Faso-Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana-China, Ethiopia-South Africa).