Publications

Michele Pertosa is a PhD Candidate in Politics and Teaching Assistant in bachelor’s and master’s level courses at Luiss Guido Carli University. His research focuses on Foreign Policy Analysis and Transatlantic Relations.

Before joining academia, he gained professional experience at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, where he worked on technology, security, and defence policies in the context of European Strategic Autonomy. He also served as a Public Sector Analyst at Deloitte Consulting, assisting Italian regional authorities in the implementation of the European Structural and Investment Funds.

Michele holds a Second Level Master’s degree in Diplomatic Studies from SIOI and graduated magna cum laude from a Double Master’s Degree program in International Relations (Luiss Guido Carli) and European Studies (University of Salzburg). His academic interests focus on processes of foreign policy change and the role of expert communities in shaping decision-making within international affairs.

Michele Petrone is a scholar in Islamic studies whose research focuses on Sub-Saharan Islamic traditions and the role of Sufism as a social network. His work examines the transmission of religious texts, devotional practices, and the formation of communal identities through Sufi orders, particularly in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. He analyzes how Sufi networks function as systems of knowledge circulation, spiritual authority, and social cohesion, often through manuscript culture and oral transmission. His studies also explore the intersection of Sufism with colonial and postcolonial dynamics, emphasizing the embeddedness of Islamic traditions in local contexts.

Mohammed Hashas [“ḥaṣ-ḥāṣ”] (PhD, Habil.) is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Luiss University of Rome; he is currently a Research Fellow affiliate to Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. His research areas are modern intellectual history of the Arab-Islamic world, Islam in Europe, and modern/contemporary Moroccan thought. Hashas has been a visiting research fellow in Copenhagen, Tilburg, Berlin, Oxford, and Winchester in Virginia. Hashas published The Idea of European Islam (2019), Intercultural Geopoetics (2017), and led the edition of Pluralism in Islamic Contexts (2021), Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm (2020), Islam, State and Modernity (2018), Imams in Western Europe (2018), besides various journal articles and book chapters. Hashas is currently finishing the editing of the first Handbook of Contemporary Moroccan Thought, for Brill 2023/4 (c. pp. 700). He contributes opinion essays in Arabic and English on religion, politics, philosophy and society in the Arab world (they are collected at his private website: www.mohammedhashas.com).  

Nicola Scaraggi is a Master’s student in International Relations at LUISS University in Rome, specializing in Security Studies, with academic experience at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., where he focused on Intelligence and Cybercrime. He holds a B.A. in Political Science, with research centered on climate security and conflict dynamics.

He serves at the Operations in the Information Environment (OIE) desk of the Irregular Warfare Center, conducting analysis on Open Source Intelligence and cognitive warfare.

Previously, he interned at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation – Directorate General for Political and Security Affairs – supporting research and strategic assessment on issues affecting Italy’s national security and foreign policy.

His broader interests include hybrid warfare and the intersection between intelligence, technology, and global politics.

Noemi Ciarniello graduated in Philosophy at University of Bologna and holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies at SOAS. She is a postdoctoral researcher at LUISS University, with a project on the assessment of D&I policies in public and private environments. Her research focuses on the relationship between current political/economic trends and gender, with particular attention to the rise of neoliberal feminism and the economic, political, and sociological implications of this intersection. She has been a research associate at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a member of the editorial board of DWF, a longstanding Italian journal dedicated to gender studies and feminist political practices.

Novella Oliana is a transdisciplinary researcher, a lecturer at LUISS University and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and a visual artist based in Rome. She received her initial training in cultural studies focused on the Mediterranean and the Middle East (University of Naples L’Orientale – Italy) and holds a practical-theoretical PhD in Visual Arts (Université Aix-Marseille – France) focused on contemporary visual representations in the Mediterranean. She is interested in the perception of the Middle East and of the Mediterranean identity through images; in particular, she focuses on the current phenomena of the displacement of images, whether material or mental and cultural, mainly considered as migrations through territories of all kinds and as fluctuations between media. Her works have been exhibited in Italy and abroad in group and solo exhibitions, and have appeared in various books, catalogues and journals. 

Her latest publications as an author include the following: “Possibili idee di mare”, in Il corpo solitario. L’autoscatto nella fotografia contemporanea, a cura di Giorgio Bonomi, Edizioni Rubbettino 2022; “The Mediterranean surface and the archetype of the island as contemporary paradigms for accessing cultural commons”, in Cultural Commons and Urban Dynamics. A multidisciplinary perspective, Università di Catanzaro, (ed. Macrì, Morea, Trimarchi), Springer edizioni 2020; “Cartografia performativa del Mediterraneo”, in Arcoscenico, catalogo del progetto e della mostra curata da Numero Cromatico e MiBACT, Roma 2020; “What I need to be myself elsewhere”, in Il sangue delle donne. Tracce di rosso sul panno bianco, a cura di Manuela De Leonardis, Postmedia Books 2018; “Chambres, univers: fragments dun espace inventé. Photographie, interférence et récit dans la représentation dun lieu liminaire”, in Espaces d’interférence narrative, Art et récit au XXI siècle, ed. Jean Arnaud, Bruno Goosse, PUM Université de Toulouse 2018; “Lo spazio dell’abitare e una categoria dello spirito”, in L’Aquila 2010: dietro la catastrofe, Meridiana Rivista di Scienze Sociali, n. 65-66, ed. Viella, Roma 2018; “Il linguaggio dell’Altro: la rivista egiziana Wajhat al-Nadhar e l’11 settembre”, in Oriente Moderno, 3/224, Istituto per l’Oriente, Roma 2018.  

Pietro Pustorino is full professor of international law in Luiss Guido Carli since 2017. He is in Luiss co-director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies, Teaching Area Leader for international law, responsible for the Erasmus Program (Department of Law) and member of the PhD Committee on Law and Business. He is also Director of the Master on International Comparative European Union Law and on Public International Law, Luiss. He was visiting scholar and professor in many European and non-European Universities. He was appointed as expert or counsel by the Italian government for many dossiers on public intenational law as diplomatic protection, protection of human rights, climate change (member of the Committee of experts in support to the G20 on Climate and Energy held in 2021) etc.