Dr Fabio Simonetti
Honorary Research Fellow - SPS

Summary

I am a social and oral historian specialising in 20th-century Modern History with a particular interest in Italy, Britain and Germany, war and military occupations, museum studies and the use of egodocuments. My research sits at the intersection of social history, memory and gender studies. Throughout my career, I have explored how war and occupation shape everyday lives, and how societies respond to and remember these experiences.

I joined Brunel in 2022 and I taught Modern History, European History and International Politics modules up to 2025. Prior to that, I completed my history-focused PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Reading, where I also taught Italian and European History and Culture modules from 2019 to 2022. My AHRC-funded CDP doctoral project (in collaboration with the Imperial War Museums) provides the first analysis of British and Italian perceptions of each other during the Allied occupation of Italy. This project received the 2022 Society for Italian Studies Postgraduate Prize and forms the basis of my first monograph in English, Encounters in Wartime Italy: A Social History of Invasion, Liberation, and Occupation (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Qualifications

• PhD in Italian Studies – University of Reading
• MA in Modern and Contemporary History – Università di Roma 'Sapienza'
• BA in History – Università di Roma 'Sapienza'