In her latest book, The World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy, Professor Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan) explores Italy's post-World War II remaking in light of the loss of a wide range of territorial possessions in Africa and the Balkans, the repatriation of Italian nationals from those territories, and the integration of these "national refugees" into a country devastated by war and overwhelmed by foreign displaced persons from Eastern Europe. Professor Kira Thurman (University of Michigan) will join Professor Ballinger for a conversation about the book and enduring questions of “who belongs” as a result of the dislocations that reconfigured Italy and the rest of Europe after the war.

Pamela Ballinger is professor of history and Fred Cuny Chair in the History of Human Rights at the University of Michigan. Her publications include History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton University Press, 2003), La Memoria dell’Esilio (Veltro Editrice, 2010), and the World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy (Cornell University Press, 2020). She has published in a wide range of journals, including Austrian History Yearbook, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Contemporary European History, Current Anthropology, Journal of Contemporary History, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies, and Past and Present. She is currently working on two book projects: An Intimate Sea: Sovereignties, Cartographies and Nature along the Modern Adriatic and Materializing Empire: Infrastructures of Italian Fascism.