ASCIONE GENNARO

ENGLISH

Gennaro Ascione is Associate Professor of Sociology. He teaches Sociology of Intercultural Processes, Cultural, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies of the Mediterranean, and Social Knowledge in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. His work focuses on epistemology, and he is a Research Fellow at GLOKNOS, the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has been Directeur d’études associé at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris and at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies.

His research interests encompass Global Studies and capitalism, with a particular focus on epistemological and methodological questions. His work explores concept formation and non-Western knowledge within the broader framework of possible dialogues between distant civilizations and cultures. He works on postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, World-Systems Analysis and, more broadly, historical sociology. His research has addressed social movements in the Global South and, subsequently, indigenous knowledge and Afrocentric ontologies. He is interested in Eastern philosophies, particularly non-dualistic ontologies, and investigates the epistemological resources that non-Western and non-hegemonic forms of knowledge can offer to contemporary critical thought. He also studies the circulation of knowledge in the premodern Mediterranean and the relationship between heresy, magic and modern science within the intellectual horizon of the Italian Renaissance. He has a particular interest in the life and thought of Giordano Bruno.

He has published three monographs to date: Concept for Global Studies: Post-Western Approaches to Critical Human Knowledge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024); Science and the Decolonization of Social Theory: Unthinking Modernity (Palgrave, 2016); and A sud di nessun Sud: Postcolonialismo, movimenti anti-sistemici e studi decoloniali (Odoya, 2009). Napoli balla. Dancefloor e sottoculture nella città postcoloniale (Tamu, 2025).

He edited the first anthology of decolonial thinkers translated into Italian, America Latina e Modernità: L’opzione decoloniale, saggi scelti (Arcoiris, 2014). He also edited the new Italian edition of Karl Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts (Dedalo, 2026).

His articles have appeared in Sociology, Journal of Historical Sociology, Cultural Sociology, Postcolonial Studies, European Journal of International Relations, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, Science, Technology and Society, Media Theory, Sociology Lens, Socio, and Storica.

He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Inter-University Research Centre on Transnational Technocultures (CRITT). He is among the founders of the international research group Non-Hegemonic World-Sociology, supported by the United Nations. He has participated in several international research networks, including the Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group, Global Social Theory, and Conceptual and Terminological Analysis in Social Sciences. From 2015 to 2017, he was a Visiting Research Associate at the University of Delhi. In 2017, as an Early Career Scholar of the World International Studies Committee, he received an award under the Frontier Research programme for research on Post-Western International Theory.

He is Deputy Chair of the Research Committee at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”.

He writes novels and is a columnist for Corriere del Mezzogiorno.