Marie Curie Ambassador

Since June 2013, I've been living and working in York, UK with my son Lorenzo and my wife Valentina.

When I discovered I had won the Marie Curie fellowship, already three years ago (time really flies!!!!!), it was quite a shock in a way. I would never have believed I could have left my country for 2 years with a 7 year old child. The great opportunity - courtesy of the European Committee and the Marie Curie Fellowship - is truly a privilege.

I think these kind of experiences show the merit of the European project for academics, students and families. An idea which allows people to discover the diversity and cultural differences between our countries is worth keeping. These intercultural projects and exchanges between European countries are really important to build a real community of countries, in terms of politics and education, and not just in terms of economy.

Another reflection I would like to share, near the end to this two-year contract at the University of York, is how lucky we are when we can study what we love. How lucky we are when we can work on the subject and the field really interest us. And how lucky we are if our job brings us far away from our country to let us discover a new world of colleagues, of archives, of academia: in all, a new way of life.

The most incredible thing is that all these opportunities were a result of my rather archaic field of study: Early Modern History. In a world where everything is so fast thanks to new technologies, studying the past could seem to be an insult for the boys and the girls of the high schools I met during these two years. It could seem to be a waste of time, when all we need to know is at your fingertips: one click and you have access to the whole world. Apparently. Perhaps. However, I’m not absolutely sure. If this were the case, my job would have no meaning.

However, what I have really learnt during my career as a historian and what I have discovered in the Archive is something slightly different: it's not easy at all unveil the secrets from our past. It's not easy at all rebuild our past, trying to illuminate - sometimes with remarkably few clues from the documents - how things really developed, what people really thought, felt and wanted! And when we do discover it, thanks to the all sources the historians can use, trust me you feel like a magician who has just learnt a new trick. Or like a new Sherlock Holmes - since we are in Britain now - when he solved one of his complicated crimes.

Of course we need as historians the new technologies to retell the past to the new generations (as I'm trying to do using this blog) and even to have easier access to the documents. But the chance to spend your time in Libraries or in the Archives, in Italy as in the UK, in Japan as in the US, is something precious the historians should not ever loose. Even if the documents would be one day all digitised, researching the past means not only reading a document but discovering its meaning and its provenance. Trying to understand and follow the smell of the traces left from the past, like a detective. Researching and studying the past is a mission which sometimes doesn't give you the results you expected. That means you have to be patient and keep going: searching, even when it seems impossible to clarify the mysteries from the past. Someone after you will thank you for your efforts. Nothing in scientific research is lost.