Dr Paolo Heywood

Biography	I studied social anthropology at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where I received my MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees (2010, 2011, 2015). After my PhD I was a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge (2014-2016), and then appointed to a Junior Research Fellowship at Homerton College, Cambridge, and as an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge (2016-2020). I came to Durham as an Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology in 2020. My research focusses on how ethical and moral ideals inform political projects and practices in contemporary Italy. My first book (After Difference, 2018) examines queer activism in Italy, and the ways in which the pursuit of 'difference' animates much of such activism. It describes both the work involved in cultivating 'difference' as a value, and the resulting complications and tensions in relation to broader Italian society and within the activist movement itself. My second book (Burying Mussolini, 2024) is an ethnography of Predappio the village in northern Italy in which Mussolini was born and is buried, and which for that reason is Italy’s premier site of neo-fascist tourism. This book explores how the inhabitants of this village learn to live in the shadow of this difficult heritage by self-consciously pursuing the value of 'ordinariness', which permeates a range of dimensions of social life, from ritual through to kinship and local politics. In addition to these empirical interests, I also have a sustained interest in wider social theory. I am the author of several contributions to debates on the 'ontological turn' in the social sciences, and have edited books and special issues on explanation, the anthropology of Italy, freedom of speech, and ethical thought experiments. My third monograph, currently in preparation, explores the parallels and intersections between understandings of 'context' in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the history of anthropology and the social sciences.
Research Interests	Activism Anthropological Theory Ethics and Morality Fascism Heritage History and Memory Italy The Ontological Turn

Biography

I studied social anthropology at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where I received my MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees (2010, 2011, 2015). After my PhD I was a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge (2014-2016), and then appointed to a Junior Research Fellowship at Homerton College, Cambridge, and as an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge (2016-2020). I came to Durham as an Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology in 2020.

My research focusses on how ethical and moral ideals inform political projects and practices in contemporary Italy.

My first book (After Difference, 2018) examines queer activism in Italy, and the ways in which the pursuit of 'difference' animates much of such activism. It describes both the work involved in cultivating 'difference' as a value, and the resulting complications and tensions in relation to broader Italian society and within the activist movement itself.

My second book (Burying Mussolini, 2024) is an ethnography of Predappio the village in northern Italy in which Mussolini was born and is buried, and which for that reason is Italy’s premier site of neo-fascist tourism. This book explores how the inhabitants of this village learn to live in the shadow of this difficult heritage by self-consciously pursuing the value of 'ordinariness', which permeates a range of dimensions of social life, from ritual through to kinship and local politics.

In addition to these empirical interests, I also have a sustained interest in wider social theory. I am the author of several contributions to debates on the 'ontological turn' in the social sciences, and have edited books and special issues on explanation, the anthropology of Italy, freedom of speech, and ethical thought experiments.

My third monograph, currently in preparation, explores the parallels and intersections between understandings of 'context' in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the history of anthropology and the social sciences.

Research Interests

Activism
Anthropological Theory
Ethics and Morality
Fascism
Heritage
History and Memory
Italy
The Ontological Turn