Dr. Mattia Fumagalli Casati
Mattia Fumagalli Casati is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for African Studies from September 2026. He was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship, a highly competitive research fellowship funded by the European Commission to support outstanding researchers in pursuing international research. He is also a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Economics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
At ASERI, the Graduate School of Economics and International Relations of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, he is Director of the Africa Project at the ASERI Global Observatory and Editorial Coordinator of Global Age: Journal of Political Studies and International Thought, an academic double-blind peer-reviewed journal on international relations and political thought. He holds a PhD in Institutions and Policies from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, where he serves as Adjunct Lecturer in Contemporary History in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Department of Modern and Contemporary History. He teaches Contemporary History – Geographies and Society; Religions, Conflicts and Slavery; and History and Institutions of Africa.
His research focuses primarily on the Horn of Africa, with particular attention to state formation processes, political, legal, and religious pluralism, slavery and slave-trade networks, historical cartography, and global history. He is the author of Contemporary Ethiopia: State Composition and Human Environment (EDUCatt, 2022).
Research at Harvard Center for African Studies: His project, Entangled Faiths and Contested Powers: Christian–Muslim Relations, Slavery and Political Pluralism in the Horn of Africa, examines the historical interactions between religious communities and political authorities in the context of state formation, slavery, and changing systems of political and legal authority. Under the supervision of Professor Zoe Marks, Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies and Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, the project brings together historical, political, and interdisciplinary perspectives on the Horn of Africa, examining how Christian–Muslim relations, slavery, and political pluralism shaped the formation and evolution of statehood and social orders. During his fellowship at Harvard University, he looks forward to engaging with the CAS community and contributing to its intellectual activities, seminars, and broader conversations on Africa across disciplines and regions. He also hopes to foster dialogue on the historical connections linking the Horn of Africa to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean worlds, while benefiting from the Center’s vibrant interdisciplinary environment.