People

Federico Paolini (Founder, Facilitator)

He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities of the University of Macerata where he teaches Contemporary History , Global History and History of Mass Culture.
From 2018 to 2024 he taught History of environmental problems at the School of Economics and Management of the University of Siena. Since 2004 his work has been exploring the relationship between environment and society, focusing on urban issues, natural resource uses and cultural change.
Over the years he have also been involved in the history of the Soviet Union, trade union movement, transport and consumption. He has published over 100 works in Italian, English and Chinese. His most recent monographs are Il turismo in Casentino: una chimera economica?; Gli scienziati, gli esperti e l’ambiente. Il caso italiano 1950-1990; Environment and Urbanization in Modern Italy (Pittsburgh 2020).

Since 2020 he has been managing the editorial series “Zenit. Investigations and research of global history” at tab editions in Rome.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London) and he was a member (2019-2025) of the Council of the Asian Association for the Environmental History (AAEH).

Iram Naseer Ahmad

She is working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History & Pakistan Studies at Forman Christian College. She has earned a PhD from the University of the Punjab. During her doctoral studies, she won an IRSIP Exchange Scholarship for a semester at Arizona State University and attended the Winter Camp at Nanjing University, China. She is a Research Associate at Oxford Research House, United Kingdom and an Associate Fellow at Royal Historical Society (RHS) linked with UCL, University College London. She has won several awards like World Scholar Award World History Commons honorarium, Volkswagen Foundation Award, Alliance for Learning in World History Award. Besides, she published articles in various peer-reviewed journals, and contributed chapters in the books Uguaglianza e disuguaglianza nel mondo globale (1950-2020) and Identità e società nel mondo globale, both published by tab edizioni in the “Zenit” series. She has also contributed a chapter in the book, South Asia, State, Society, Politics published by Nobels, Turkey.

Michael Shiyung Liu

He is currently Distinguished Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Global Professor at Asian Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh, PA., USA. Michael S. Liu was Erasmus Mundus Fellow of EU in 2010 and the President of Association of East Asian Environmental History (2017-2019). His research interests are Modern history of public health in Asia and East Asian environmental history with 4 monographs and 50 plus peer-reviewed articles on these disciplines.

Cecília Soares

She is a researcher currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, with a postdoc at the OSC/Sciences Po Paris (2018) and another at the Department of History/Fluminense Federal University (2025-ongoing). Her work focuses on using fashion apparel and accessories, particularly shoes, as materials to rebuild and interpret modernity and transformations in the Atlantic space during the nineteenth century. She also studies the life and achievements of Brazilian investor Eufrásia Teixeira Leite during the belle époque. Her first book, Barões de Tamancos: uma história social dos sapatos no Rio de Janeiro (1808–1914), was published in 2023. Besides that, she’s also published in several peer-reviewed journals and contributed chapters to different books.

 

A special thanks goes to Carmine Civale — Head of Technical and Scientific Services at DILBEC — because without his help and expertise this website would never have gone online.