Research

My research has focused on the production of knowledge for agricultural policy, and on the different empirical practices, organisations and forms of expertise through which agriculture was made observable. Accountancy data proved central to the data revolution that transformed agriculture since the early 20th century, which was engineered and carried out by experts and farmers' organizations.

At the origins of political economy, in the eighteenth century, lies a concrete concern with government action. The Neapolitan tradition of Economia civile articulated this concern in terms of felicitas publica[-->]and of thefunctions of government[-->].

Policy action, in this context, depended on the construction of an information space that was complex and articulated. My research on the administrative culture of Ancien Régime Naples has examined the conflicts surrounding the production, circulation and authority of information, particularly in relation to grain policy, in Numeri falsi e numeri errati: le basi informative della politica granaria a Napoli nella seconda metà del secolo XVIII[-->].

My current research takes this question further by investigating the emergence, in the eighteenth century, of a distinctive attitude towards facts. Much of the existing literature has explored the relationship between political economy and the natural sciences, particularly Newtonian physics. My research instead explores the connections between economic knowledge and the antiquarian and philological traditions, asking how these traditions contributed to the emergence of what could count as an economic fact[-->].

Most work on the economic constitution of European institutions has focused on the creation of the Common Market and Single Market, and on the Economic and Monetary Union. My new research takes a different approach by examining more closely the developmental ambitions of European institutions and the ways in which they sought to shape investment and economic transformation.

I am particularly interested in the investment priorities identified by European organisations: first through the activities of the European Investment Bank, and subsequently through initiatives such as the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and European regional policies.

I am also investigating the early-modern concept ofcoup d'œil as a way of understanding decision-making and practical judgement[-->].

I plan a new project on the history ofbackwardness: how the modern concept emerged and became an object of policy intervention. Critical approaches to development studies have traditionally understood backwardness as the result of a foreign gaze upon an organic community, whether a village or a nation. My research instead explores how metrics of progress and backwardness may be constructed within the community itself, and how they can support strategies of catching up through reform, emulation and adaptation. Backwardness thus becomes not simply an external judgement, but an element in the political strategies of historical actors themselves.