About

Dr Paola Toninato is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. Her research is interdisciplinary, encompassing Italian and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Literary Anthropology. Previously she has worked in the Department of Sociology of Warwick and in the Department of International Development of the University of Oxford, where she collaborated with Professor Robin Cohen on his ESRC-funded programme on creolization and mixed identities and on a jointly edited publication entitled The Creolization Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures.

Research interests

Her project The Making of Gypsy Diasporas was funded by the AHRC programme ‘Diasporas, Migration and Identities’. It explored the usefulness of the diaspora paradigm in studying Romani identity and paid particular attention to notions of origin, homeland and memory in writings of Roma intellectuals and activists. The research involved fieldwork among Roma in Northern Italy and a six months Research Fellowship in the Department of Psychology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Verona.

As part of her research activities, she has coordinated a series of workshops on migration, mobility and Italian identities for the Italian Department within the AHRC-funded research programme ‘Mobility and Identity Formation’, and has organised with Dr Alessandra De Martino Cappuccio an international conference on minority theatre in Italy, Empowering Marginalized Voices in Theatre. The Case of Italy and BeyondLink opens in a new window, which took place at the University of Warwick on 11 May 2011.

Her recent book publications include the monograph Romani Writing (Routledge, 2014), and Differences on Stage, co-edited with Alessandra De Martino and Paolo Puppa (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), which was nominated for the George Freedley Memorial Award of the Theatre Library Association.

Selected publications

• Romani Writing: Literacy, Literature and Identity PoliticsLink opens in a new window. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014
• Differences on StageLink opens in a new window, co-edited with Alessandra De Martino Cappuccio and Paolo Puppa. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013

Qualifications

• BA (Trieste)
• Postgraduate Certificate in Social Anthropology (Padua)
• PhD (Warwick)