My research interests include ideas of race and ethnicity, labour history, radicalism and migration studies. My first monograph, under contract with the University of Illinois Press and with an expected publication date of December 2020, places American socialism in a global and transnational dimension, demonstrating how the foreign origin of early American socialists influenced their conception of race and ethnicity, and in turn contributed to shape American debates on progress, civilisation and modernity during the Gilded Age and beyond.
Currently, I am developing a research project on ideas of race in the Second International (1889-1914). The Second International had a fundamental role in favouring the active exchange of ideas among workers across the world. Founded in 1889 as a loose federation of socialist parties and trade unions, it gathered workers coming from Europe, the US, parts of South America, Asia and Africa. While race was rarely discussed as a distinct issue, socialists debated closely aligned notions, such as colonialism, immigration and imperialism. By focusing on a group of countries that actively participated in the International (Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and the US) and by extending the analysis to their colonies, this project will produce the first study of transnational ideas of race in the global working class.