Team

Massimo Prearo is a political scientist, member, and scientific coordinator of the research center PoliTeSse – Politics and Theories of Sexuality at the University of Verona (Italy). He has been studying LGBTQIA+ movements in France and in Italy for almost 20 years. Within this field he has also conducted a political ethnography on how the State deals with LGBTQIA+ migrants. Since 2015, he has studied the so-called “anti-gender” movements in Italy, and in particular the intertwining between the religious and the political dimensions of the mobilization in the Italian context. He is now involved in a new research project on the emergence and the implementation of LGBT+ equality policies in Italy, but also at the European level. After having specialized in the social movement analysis, he is now studying the institutional and political side of LGBT+ issues. His latest book L’ipotesi neocattolica. Politologia dei movimenti anti-gender (2020), has also been published in French (Editions de l'ULB, 2023), and in a fully revised and updated version in English, as Anti-gender Mobilizations, Religion and Politics: an Italian Case Study(Routledge, 2024).
He is currently Principal Investigator of the LGBTIQ+POL project - The institutionalization of LGBTIQ+ equality in EU countries between advancements and oppositions: policies, actors, arenas.

Federico Trastulli is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science at the University of Verona. His research interests concern political parties, voting behaviour, and the dimensions of political conflict in Italy and Western Europe. His research has been published in edited volumes and scientific journals including Perspectives on Politics, Representation, Italian Political Science Review, Modern Italy, European Politics and Society, Frontiers in Political Science, and the Italian Journal of Electoral Studies.

Lorenzo Bernini is associate professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Verona, Italy. He founded the Research Centre PoliTeSse (Politics and Theories of Sexuality), which he now directs. He is also one of the founders of GIFTS, the network of Gender, Intersex, Feminist, Transfeminist and Sexuality studies. His interests range from classical political philosophy (especially Thomas Hobbes) and French thought of the twentieth century (especially Michel Foucault), to contemporary theories of radical democracy, critical race theories and and queer theories. Among his books: Queer Apocalypses: Elements of Antisocial Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), that was previously published in Italian (Edizioni ETS, 2013) and Spanish (Editorial EGALES, 2015); Queer Theories: An Introduction. From Mario Mieli to the Antisocial Turn (Routledge, 2019), that was previously published in Italian (Mimesis, 2017), and Spanish (Editorial EGALES, 2018) and then in French (Eterotopia France 2024), The Sexual/Political: Freud with Marx, Fanon, Foucault (Routledge 2023), that was previously published in Italian (Edizioni ETS, 2019).

Nico Isa Borrelli (he/they) is a Ph.D. student in Gender Studies–Political Science at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro.” In 2023, he received the Rainbow Awards for his work and communicative activism. His first essay, Gender is Over, was published by Feltrinelli in 2024. A committed trans-feminist activist, he engages in grassroots movements such as Dissidente Collettiva Trans Separata, as well as in transnational organizations, including Transgender Europe, where he serves as Co-Chair.

Pamela Pansardi (assocciated PI) is a political scientist. She has worked extensively on the political discourse of EU leaders, studying gender differences in leadership performance as well as investigating policy preferences. She studied the determinants of women’s representation in Italy and in comparative perspective, supported by a grant of the University of Pavia for the Blue Sky Project “Gender and power in Italian politics”. In 2018, she founded the Standing Group "Gender and Politics" of the Italian Political Science Association, that she co-chaired until 2022. She is currently the PI for the project “Assessing obstacles and inequalities in gender and LGBT+ political leadership and careers” (Fondazione Cariplo, 2022). Her competence in quantitative methods and comparative analysis, together with her expertise in content and text analysis, will allow her to develp the research design and guiding the creation of the coding protocol for LGBTIQ+ equality policies.

Eugenio Salvati is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pavia. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pavia and has been visiting student at the University of Antwerp. His main research interests focus on political institutions and political elites, the process of European integration and multilevel governance, local welfare and social policy.

Francesco (he/him) is PhD candidate at Paris Cité University where he conducts research on the intersection between statehood and sexuality in Europe and explores the possibility of state abolitionism through queer of color critique. He also works on French and Italian anti-gender movements, and European LGBT+ policymaking.

Federica Liveriero (team member) is a political philosopher. She has been working extensively on the normative and epistemological foundations of contentious policies, including issues such as same-sex marriages. Her expertise in the theory of democratic disagreement will help guiding the coding of LGBTIQ+ equality policies and the comprehension of the majority-opposition dynamics.

Margherita Bordignon (Ph.D. in Political Science) is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science at University of Pavia, currently working on the project “The institutionalization of LGBTIQ+ equality in EU countries between advancements and oppositions: policies, actors, arenas” (LGBTIQ+POL). Her main research interests include elites’ studies, political communication and social media. Her research has been published in national and international edited volumes and scientific journals including West European Politics, the Journal of Information, Technology and Politics, and the Italian Quaderni di Scienza Politica.

Elisabetta De Giorgi (associate PI) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Trieste. She worked as a research fellow in Siena until 2011, before moving to NOVA University in Lisbon in 2012 as a post-doctoral fellow and then as a fixed-term researcher. Her main research interests are representative institutions and the behaviour of various institutional actors within them, most recently with a focus on whether and how gender issues are framed by political parties in and outside the parliamentary arena. She has published several articles in national and international journals and co-edited several special issues and the volume ‘Opposition Parties in European Legislatures’ (2018). She has participated in several national and international research projects and currently heads the research unit in Trieste of the PRIN 2020 project 'Democracy under Pressure' (2022-) and the PRIN PNRR project 'The institutionalization of LGBTIQ+ equality in EU countries between advancements and oppositions' (2023-). She is Associate editor of the journal South European Society and Politics and co-chair of the Standing Group Government, Parliament, Representation of the Italian Political Science Association (2022-).

Gaia Matilde Ripamonti is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science at the University of Trieste. Her research interests include intergovernmental relations, regional politics and policy, and gender studies. In addition to this project, she is currently researching the effectiveness and accessibility of the right to abortion in Italy. Her work has been published in Regional & Federal Studies, the Italian Political Science Review, the Italian Journal of Public Policy, Contemporary Italian Politics.