Biography
Luigi Achilli is a part-time assistant professor at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in political anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). His research and writing focus on irregular migration, transnational crime, refugee studies, political engagement and nationalism, and the Palestinian issue. Ethnographic in approach, his work is based on extensive field research in the Middle East, Southern Europe, and Mexico. He taught at Cambridge, SOAS, and various universities in the Middle East. At the MPC, he is currently in charge of the axis of research on war, mobility and agency for the ERC Consolidator Grant “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience.” Over the years, he has conducted research and authored several among reports and policy briefs for the use of policy makers and practitioners – he is currently the Global Research Coordinator for the EU funded project: “STRIVE Juvenile: Preventing and Responding to Violence against Children by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups, implemented by UNODC. In 2017, Achilli was awarded with a Marie Curie Global Fellowship for his research project "MAPS – Migrant and People Smuggler, "a comparative analysis of the US-Mexico border and the Mediterranean smuggling routes. On this and related topics, Achilli published several articles and other influential work. He is currently co-editing the new edition of “Global Human Smuggling” (John Hopkins UP, New York, 2022).