Successful NEWFELPRO stories: Francesca Rolandi and history of migrations

 
Francesca Rolandi, picture is taken from the webpage.
NEWFELPRO's researcher from the incoming scheme, Francesca Rolandi, brought to an end her two year long project The migration flows in the Upper Adriatic area during the Cold War. An insight into asylum policies at the border of the Western Bloc (MIGFLOUPADCOWA) at the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka under the mentorship of Professor Darko Dukovski.

Francesca Rolandi graduated in history at the University of Milan, and got a PhD in Slavic Studies at the University of Turin by exploring the influence of Italian popular culture in Yugoslavia in the period from 1955 to 1965. Her current research is focused on the migration of Yugoslav citizens in Italy in the period between 1950 and 1960. Currently, Francesca Rolandi's project investigates transnational migration in the Upper Adriatic from 1954 to 1969. In fact, in those post-war decades, every year thousands of migrants and refugees from Eastern Europe applied for political asylum in Italy in order to board the ship for overseas destinations. The citizens of Yugoslavia were in a majority until the 1960s when their numbers began to decline which coincided with a parallel increase in the number of refugees from other eastern countries. In both cases, the region has played a major role because of its geographical proximity.

During the implementation of her NEWFELPRO project she presented her work by:
Professor Rolandi besides her research work actively translates from Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian to the Italian language and she is working as a journalist in the Osservatorio sui Balcani and Profiles dell'Est.