Martina BIONDI

Dr. Martina Biondi is a historian of North Africa and the Middle East. She is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the University of Maryland, Department of History, with the project HICAMA – History of Care in the Maghreb. Infectious Diseases, Healthcare Infrastructures, and International Aid (1956–1999). Her research focuses on the history of public health, gender history, and political and solidarity networks in North Africa. She is also an affiliated researcher at the Department of History at Utrecht University within the ERC project Fighting Pandemics from Below: Global North–South Public Health Cooperation in the Middle East and North Africa, 1792–1942, and an associate researcher at the Espace, Histoire et Humanités Digitales Laboratory in the Department of History and Civilization at the University of Casablanca Ben M’sik.

In 2024, Dr. Biondi was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History at Utrecht University. She received her PhD from the University of Perugia (Department of Political Science) in 2023, with a dissertation exploring women’s activism and practices of memorialization of Morocco’s Years of Lead. Dr. Biondi has conducted research stays in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, France, and the United States. She has been a visiting researcher at the Centre National de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle (Division Socio-anthropologie de l’Histoire et de la Mémoire – HistMém) in Oran, Algeria, and at the Department of History and Civilization at the University of Casablanca. In 2023, she served as Adjunct Professor of History and Institutions of Islamic Countries in the Department of Humanities at the University of Macerata (Italy). She is a member of the editorial boards of Africa & Orienti and the Rivista Italiana di Storia Internazionale. She received the 2022 Anna Vanzan Prize from the Italian Society of Women Historians for her MA thesis on Moroccan gender history, based on the autobiographical writings of Leila Abouzeid. Her research has been published in national and international journals. Her first monograph, Il Marocco degli anni di piombo. Attivismo femminile, sinistra e memoria (1965–2005), is forthcoming with Viella Editore.