Book Synopsis

Migration Narratives in the Early Modern Mediterranean (1450-1850) is a collection of essays providing a fascinating insight into the migration experiences of different Mediterranean people who found themselves forced to leave their places of origin during the 'long' early modern period. The rationale behind migration - for religious, political, and environmental reasons - is the central theme around which the various chapters are organised, while a final section on gypsies allows the reader to explore the difference between mobility and migration. An original fresco of migratory trajectories and experiences composed through the soundness of the empirical work on which the chapters are grounded.

Contributors are: Matteo Al Kalak, Houssem Eddine Chachia, Michael Gasperoni, Catherine Brice, Erkjad Kajo, Elena Bacchin, İlkay Kirişçioğlu, Matteo Calcagni, Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou, Eleonora Anedda, Elisa Novi Chavarria, Maria Gloria Tumminelli, Massimo Aresu, and Giovanni Tarantino.

About the Author

Filomena Viviana Tagliaferri is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Modena. She works on people's mobility, the role of cheap print in influencing cultural shifts, and the social visibility of foreigner groups in early modern urban environments. Her recent publications include It is not possible to serve two masters. Stampa e polemica anticattolica nell'Inghilterra elisabettiana (1570-1687) (2025), and the edited volume Visible Strangers: Early Modern Urban Identities, Social Visibility and the Mediterranean Paradigm (16th-18th centuries) (2025).

Matteo Al Kalak is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He is specialised in religious history from a cultural and institutional perspective, with a particular focus on dissent, mechanisms of repression, and reformism. His recent publications include Mangiare Dio. Una storia dell'eucarestia (2021) and Fuoco e fiamme. Storia e geografia dell'inferno (2024).

Maria Chiara Rioli is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Her research focuses on the history of Palestine in the contemporary age, mobility in the Mediterranean, archives, public and digital history. She has recently published L'archivio Mediterraneo. Documentare le migrazioni contemporanee (2021).