Vittorio Tavagnutti is PhD student studying Analysis of Social and Economic Processes at the University of Milano-Bicocca. His research project aims at exploring how processes of racialization and dynamics related to gender and generational belonging influence the activism of Roma and Sinti communities in Italy. He graduated in 2017 from the MA program in Human rights and multi-level governance at the University of Padua, where he defended a thesis focusing on Romanì feminist activism in Romania. Prior to enrolling in his PhD program, he worked for the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) and for the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE).
Through the Doctoral Support Program (DSP) for Non-CEU Students, Vittorio came to the CEU Romani Studies to further his PhD project research on Intersectional Positionality and Intersectional Praxis in the Romanì Ethnic Mobilization.
In this research, with a special focus on Romanì women activists, Vittorio focuses on the growing body of work that sheds light on how Romanì women engage in collective action and tackle the complex systems of power shaped (among others) by anti-Gypsyism and sexism in which they are embedded. The Italian context is seldom addressed by these scholarly works. This research aims at contributing to filling this gap by addressing to the following questions: how does Romanì women activists’ positionality at the crossroads of anti-Gypsyism and sexism shape their engagement in the mobilization? How is intersectionality as an action repertoire adopted in the mobilization? What are the processes of change in the mobilization in terms of Romanì women’s engagement and adoption of an intersectional approach and how are they connected to processes of change happening in the broader context in which Romanì activists live and operate?