Associate Professor of Islamic countries, Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge
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Renata Pepicelli was born in Naples in 1976 and graduated at L’Orientale University of Naples. She obtained her PhD in “Mediterranean Geopolitics and Culture” (XX cycle) at the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (SUM), University Federico II of Naples. In 2013 she became an associate professor in the scientific area of Ancient Near East, Middle East and African Cultures (L-OR/10); she was Rtd B researcher in History of Islamic Countries at the University's Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge where since 2020 she has been associate professor of Contemporary History of the Arab World.

Institutional assignments

She is a member of the Committee on Equal Opportunities, Wellness of Employees and Non-Discrimination (CUG), a member of the Committee for the University Sustainable Development and director’s delegate of the Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge in the Third Mission. She is a member of the PhD Council of the PhD Programme in History and of the Interdepartmental Centre of Sciences for Peace (CISP) at the University of Pisa. She is the coordinator of the interuniversity anti-violence help desk of Pisa, established through the collaboration among the CUG of the three higher education institutions of Pisa. She is regularly interviewed by newspapers, radio, and TV on her studies’ topics, and she has been involved in third mission activities for years, enhancing the exchange between universities, society and territories, particularly on the topics of gender issues, women’s and minority rights, Islam.

Scientific and teaching activities

Her scientific activities deal with the social and cultural history of the contemporary Arab-Islamic world, with a particular emphasis on North Africa. She is an international expert on gender studies in the Arab-Islamic context, focusing her research on the analysis of women's history, the construction of f femininity and masculinity patterns in the Mediterranean area, Islamic thought, the condition of youth, Arab Islamism between the 20th and 21st centuries, and diasporic phenomena, including the question of Islam in Europe and Italy.

She is the author of monographs, editorships and many essays, she has organized and took part in national and international conferences and workshops.

She has carried out an intense research activity at the national and international level.

In recent years, she collaborated with several Italian universities to teach in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and was a member of PhD committees. She was a visiting professor at the University of Bristol in Great Britain, the Université Cadi Ayyad in Marrakesh, Morocco, the Université of Kairoun in Tunisia, and the University of Granada in Spain.

Her activities focus on teaching: committed to experimenting with interactive forms of teaching-learning, she is part of the experimental project "Mentoring Communities" at the University of Pisa. She currently teaches the following courses: Islamology, History of the Contemporary Arab World, Islamic Studies: thought, politics, gender and teaches a learning module in the cross-cutting course Gender Studies and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.