GISSI ALESSANDRA

I am an Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Naples "L'Orientale". I have been part of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed biannual journal "Genesis. Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche" and the editorial board of the peer-reviewed quarterly journal "Italia Contemporanea". In the same journal, I participated in the editorial committee from 2022 to 2025.

I am part of the scientific committee of the series 'Questioni di genere. Sguardi interdisciplinari su linguaggi, pratiche, relazioni, corpi, rappresentazioni', directed by Irene Biemmi, Stefano Ciccone and Barbara Poggio (Rosenberg & Sellier, Turin), of the Scientific Council of the National Women's Union Series coordinated by Prof. Stefania Bartoloni (Viella, Rome) and of the Editorial Board of the new series Annali Fondazione Gramsci.

I am on the board of the Italian Association of Women Historians (SIS) and a member of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History (SISSCO), the Interuniversity Center for Cultural History (CSC - Universities of Padua, Pisa, Venice and Bologna), the Italian American Studies Association (IASA) and the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (ASMI).

I am a member of the Academic Senate as representative of associate professors of the Department of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Naples 'L'Orientale'; of the Council of the Master's Degree Program in Italian Language and Culture for Foreigners – class LM-14 (University of Naples "L'Orientale"); of the Scientific Council of the 'Gender History' research Center (Department of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Naples 'L'Orientale'), of the Scientific Council of the 'International Migration Mobility' Center (Department of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Naples 'L'Orientale').

Since 2013, I am a member of the Academic Board of the PhD program in International Studies at the University of Naples L'Orientale.

I was a Ph.D Visiting Student and Guest Researcher at the University of Amsterdam for two semesters during which I conducted research at the International Institute of Social History and the International Information Centre and Archives for the Women's Movement (Amsterdam).
In 2015, I was a Visiting Researcher at John Jay College, City University of New York (CUNY). The visit included seminar activities also at the Graduate Center of the university.
In 2019, I was a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Medical Humanities, School of History, Philosophy and Religion, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.

My research interests relate to women's and gender history, the history of bodies and reproduction, the history of domestic work, the history of migrations.

Among my main publications: Le segrete manovre delle donne. Levatrici in Italia dall'Unità al Fascismo (2006; 2nd edition 2022) and Otto marzo. La giornata internazionale delle donne in Italia (2010); "'The Home as a Factory: Rethinking the Debate on Housewives' Wages in Italy (1929-1980)", in A. Bellavitis, R. Sarti, and M. Martini (eds.), What is work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business, Berghahn Books, Oxford-New York, 2018, pp. 139-160; La «fonction essentielle» des femmes: Famille, travail domestique et salaire en Italie entre fascisme et République. in Rives Méditerranéennes 60, 2020, pp.109-132; Donne e migrazioni in Silvia Salvatici (ed.), Storia delle donne nell'Italia contemporanea, Carocci, Roma, 2022, pp. 237-258.

My most recent monograph is (with Paola Stelliferi), L'aborto. Una storia, Carocci, Rome, 2023 (the volume received a special mention from the jury for non-fiction at the 2024 Napoli Prize and is currently being translated and published by Routledge).
I hold the Italian national scientific qualification as full professor in the sector HIST-03/A (contemporary history).