Laura is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she teaches Contemporary History, European Political History, Political and Intellectual History.
In 2022 she was an academic visitor to the Faculty of History at Oxford University, OCEH; and has had two short-term Visiting Fellowships at St. John’s and Jesus College.
Starting with her thesis on the cultural origins of Italian nationalism, Laura’s research has developed along the main axis of the intertwining of culture and politics around the major issues of 20th-century history, from the nationalisation of the masses, to the representation/inclusion/exclusion of labour from the political sphere, to the role of the state and the making of the ruling classes, on which she has written a hundred essays and some books.
Over time, she has addressed topics of history and memory of labour – she was a founding member of the Italian Society for the History of Labour (Sislav) – images of the Empire, Catholic political culture, intellectual networks and cultural institutions. However, her main interest has remained the cultural production of intellectuals and political actors on the transformation of the state in the face of the challenge of mass democracy and the emergence of labour as the constitutional foundation of 20th-century European democracies. In this context, Laura’s research has focused on right-wing cultures in the interwar period. She is (still) writing a book on the political culture of Italian fascism, provisionally entitled Understanding Italian Fascism, scheduled for publication in 2026, which she is working on during her stay in Oxford.