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Dr Fabio Simonetti
Lecturer in European Politics and History

Research area(s)

  • Twentieth-century Italian and European History
  • Social history of war and occupation
  • Soldier-civilian and gender encounters in war zones
  • Oral history and autobiographical sources

Research Interests

I am particularly interested in understanding how war and occupation affect people’s lives and how societies respond to them by exploring wartime encounters between soldiers and civilians through the prism of autobiographical sources, material culture, and artistic representations in connection with official documentation.

My first monograph - Via Tasso. Quartier generale e carcere tedesco durante l’occupazione di Roma (2016) - explored the history and memory of Via Tasso, the Gestapo/SD HQ and prison in Nazi-occupied Rome. I have also published articles on the British soldiers' perception of their encounter with locals in Sicily, the material culture of the Allied occupation of Italy, and the construction of a stereotyped image of the ‘enemy’ in Britain and Italy in the 1940s.

I am currently writing my first monograph in English language. The book will explore the encounter between British soldiers and Italian civilians during the Second World War Allied occupation of Italy.

Selected Publications

Monograph

  • 2016: Simonetti, F., Via Tasso. Quartier generale e carcere tedesco durante l’occupazione di Roma (Rome: Odradek) (332 pages). ISBN: 9788896487556.

Articles in peer-reviewed journals and volumes

  • 2022: Simonetti, F., ‘Invasion, Liberation and Occupation: British Soldiers’ Wartime Encounters in Sicily’, in One Hundred Years of Army Historical Research, ed. by A. Bamford (Warwick: Helion & Company, 2022), pp. 271-296;
  • 2020: Simonetti, F., ‘Researching Testimonial Objects: The Postmemory of the Allied Occupation of Italy through the Imperial War Museum’s Collections’, Status Quaestionis. Language, Text, Culture, 18, 171-188. ISSN: 2239-1983;
  • 2020: Simonetti, F., ‘Shaping Each Other: British and Italian Depictions of the Enemy (1935-1943)’, in Fascism and Anti-fascism in Great Britain, ed. by T. Colacicco (Pisa: Pacini), pp. 221-241. ISBN: 978-88-6995-699-7.

Other articles 

  • 2020: Simonetti, F., ‘The Landings in Sicily: Soldiers’ and Civilians’ Perception of a Wartime Encounter’, in Wars in History. Historical Documents and Actual Problems of Archaeography, Archivistics, Source Studies, Russian and World History of Modern and Recent Times (Moscow: Political Encyclopaedia Publisher), pp. 380-385;
  • 2016: Simonetti, F., 'From the Alps to the American Air Museum: Pont-Saint-Martin and the Memory of the Bombing Raid of 23 August 1944', IWM Despatches, 23, 26-29. ISBN: 978-19-0489-747-7.

Edited volumes

  • 2015: Simonetti, F. and Ricciardi, C. (eds.), Il ragazzo con i baffi. Lettere dalla Russia (Rome: IlMioLibro) (107 pages). ISBN: 9788891097477.

Research links