Fields of research

• Modern European History, especially Italy
• Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European colonialism
• Nationalism and nation-building
• Biography
• Religion and politics
• Masculinity and politics

Current research projects

• European colonies of settlement in Argentina, Peru and Chile, c.1810 to c.1940
• Masculinity and politics in modern Europe
• History and memory in Southern Italy

Selected recent publications

• "The sex lives of Italian patriots", in V. Babini, C. Beccalossi and L. Riall (eds), Italian Sexualities Uncovered. The Long Nineteenth Century (London, Palgrave, 2015), pp. 37-57.
• "Travel, migration, exile: Garibaldi’s global fame", Modern Italy 19/1 (2014), pp. 41-52.
• "Introduction" to Ippolito Nievo, Confessions of an Italian (London, Penguin Modern Classics, 2014 [1857]), xiii-xxxii.
• Under the Volcano: Revolution in a Sicilian Town (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013) - Italian translation: La Rivolta. Bronte 1860 (Rome & Bari, Laterza, 2012).
• "Guerre et nation dans l’Italie du Risorgimento", Revue de l’histoire du xix siècle, 44/1 (2012), pp. 49-64.
• "Anticattolicesimo e rinascita cattolica: la Gran Bretagna, l’Irlanda e gli stati pontifici, 1850-1860", in R. Balzani and A. Varni (eds), La Romagna nel Risorgimento. Politica, società e cultura al tempo dell'Unità (Rome and Bari, Laterza, 2012), pp. 5-44.
• "Men at war: masculinity and military ideals in the Risorgimento", in S. Patriarca and L. Riall (eds), The Risorgimento revisited: Nationalism and Culture in 19th-Century Italy (London, Palgrave, 2012), pp. 152-70.
• "The shallow end of history? On the substance and future of political biography", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 40/3, 2010, pp. 375-97.
• "Martyr cults in nineteenth-century Italy", Journal of Modern History, 82/2, 2010, pp. 255-87.
• "Fathers of the nation? Bismarck, Garibaldi and the cult of memory in Germany and Italy" (with Robert Gerwarth), European History Quarterly, 39/3, 2009, pp. 388-413.