«name one thing in this world that is not negotiable»
In Syria and Lebanon, power does not live only in palaces: it is negotiated every day between centre and peripheries, between institutions and intermediaries. For twenty-five years I have been trying to tell how.
Journalist, historian, lecturer. Analyst for ANSA and Limes, contributor to Swiss Radio (RSI) and il manifesto. I teach at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and at Sapienza University of Rome.
Work in progress
- A book on Beirut, due in 2027.
- Power and Negotiations in the Middle East, a revised English edition of Negoziazione e potere (Viella, forthcoming).
- Syria after the Asads: confessional grammar, reconstruction, return.
- Migration and borders between Syria and Lebanon.
- A contribution to the glossary The Everyday Politics of Language in the Humanitarian Experience (Brill, forthcoming).
Recent analysis
My analyses and dispatches from 2022 to 2025, mostly in Italian, are kept on the old site. Selected articles and books are listed under Publications.