Alessandro CASELLATO

Alessandro Casellato is an associate professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; he teaches Social History, History of Contemporary Italy and Oral History. His research interests are focused on the following themes:
·       practice, methodology and applications of oral history and oral archives;
·       experience and memory of political activism, investigated through local stories, biographies and autobiographies, family networks;
·       regional and local history;
·       history of labour, workers and trade unions;
·       didactics of history, public history, "history from below".

He is member of the Venice Center for Digital and Public Humanities; editor of the scientific journals “Il de Martino. Storie voci suoni”, “La ricerca folklorica” and “Venetica”; member of the scientific boards of “Italia contemporanea” and “Lares”.
He has coordinated two national research groups on the topics “Best practices for oral history” (2014-2015 and 2019-2020) and “Vademecum for the preservation of oral sources” (2019-2021).
Between 2017 and 2021 he presided the Italian Oral History Association.
Now he is the scientific director of the project Archive of Oral Sources and the coordinator (with Adelisa Malena) of the Ego Documents Laboratory at Ca' Foscari.
 
Education
He completed his university studies at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, obtaining a master’s degree in history (1996) and a PhD in European Social History (2004).
 
Research
Now he is studying the history, methodology and archives produced by the oral history movement. He is also scientific responsible for the Marie Curie Individual fellowships project “IT-POW FAMILIES: Families and Memories of Italian Prisoners of War in Yugoslavia after World War II “- 2020-2024 (fellow Urška Lampe), for the research project “Feltre, città dei matti: per un archivio orale del manicomio di Feltre “- 2021-2022 (researcher Cecilia Molesini).
 
Public history
He is the author - with Sergio Luzzatto and Daniele Valentini - of the video documentary I fratelli Cervi. Storia, memoria, invenzione (Rai Speciale TG1, April 16, 2009).
As delegate of the rector of Ca' Foscari for the Holocaust Memorial Day, he has curated three exhibitions on historical themes and several collateral activities: In Memoriam. Aktion T4: the extermination of the disabled (2016), Ascari and schiavoni. Colonial Racism and Venice (2017), Ca' Foscari in the Mirror. 80 years after the racial laws (2018).
 
Academic positions
• Teaching Board of the PhD program in European Social History from the Middle Ages to the Contemporary Age at Ca' Foscari University, Venice (2011-2014) and of the PhD program in Historical, Geographical and Anthropological Studies of the Universities of Padua, Verona and Venice (from 2015 to present)
• Teaching Board of the degree courses in History (2003-2006 and 2014-2020), coordinator (2018-2020).
• Teaching Board of the degree course in Anthropology, Ethnology, Ethnolinguistics (2010-2017)
• Delegate of the Rector of Ca' Foscari University for the Holocaust Memorial Day (2015-2018)
• Visiting Professor at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Santa Fe - Argentina (2015).
• Academic Senate of Ca' Foscari University (2012-2014)
 
Awards and prizes
• "Costantino Pavan" National Youth Prize for works on local cultures (1997)
• Finalist Salotto Veneto Prize (1998)
• Finalist Giovanni Comisso Award - biographies section (2009)
• Aganoor Pompilj Prize - publications of correspondence and/or epistolary correspondence section (2010)
• Ca’ Foscari University Award for Education (2019)
 
Publications
He wrote about 120 scientific publications, including 6 monographs or publications of unpublished sources, about 20 editions, about 40 articles in journals, about 40 contributions to volumes or conference proceedings: https://www.unive.it/data/persone/5592874/pubb_anno