Biography
Virginia Fiume is a Visiting Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance (STG), where she is currently working on Mapping Nonviolence in the Mediterranean, a research-action project aimed at prototyping a Nonviolence Knowledge and Praxis Hub.
This project builds on her work as a Policy Leader Fellow at STG (2023–2024), where she explored the role of social movements’ direct action in shaping policy-making processes, with a particular focus on feminism and democracy. In this context she organised the workshop ‘Nonviolence as Democratic Innovation’ as a contribution to the European Nonviolent Network project and in collaboration with the EUI Transnational Democracy Cluster. She also took part in the launch activities of the Democratic Odyssey project.
In May 2024, she was part of the mobilisation of the Encampment for Palestine in Piazza San Marco, in Florence and participated in the collective work for writing the report ‘Toscana Aperta – Symposium against scholasticide in Gaza’.
Virginia has extensive experience in transnational campaigns, participatory democracy processes, and applied research on media and communication across Southern and Central Eastern Europe, North America, and the Middle East. As Co-founder and Co-President of EUMANS (2019–2023), she led political advocacy strategies and organised activist mobilisation efforts for European Citizens' Initiatives, a national referendum, and multiple deliberative citizens' assemblies. She was also an active member of the Citizens Take Over Europe coalition, advocating for meaningful reforms in democratic participation within the European Union.
Before her political and advocacy work, Virginia spent several years as a freelance journalist. From 2014 to 2019, she worked in London as a Sales Engineer and Customer Success Manager in media-tech startups.
She holds an MA in Anthropology of Media from SOAS, University of London, and a degree in Criticism and Theory of Literature from Università degli Studi di Milano.