Riccardo Armillei

In October 2014 I joined the UNESCO Chair team and the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation as an Associate Research Fellow. At the moment I am conducting research in the area of civil society, democratisation and political transformations applied in the context of Arab Spring countries (with a special focus on Tunisia).
I am also working on a comparative migration research project, which looks at asylum seekers policies in the Mediterranean and Pacific areas (with a focus on ‘boat people’ in Italy and Australia).
My research interests include Romani studies, forced migrations, social justice, cross-cultural theories and practices. I undertook my Ph.D. at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research where I examined the social exclusion of Romanies in Italy. My dissertation focused particularly on the condition of those living in the so called 'campi nomadi' (nomad camps) and on the recent implementation of the 'Emergenza Nomadi' (nomad emergency). Between 2011 and 2012, I carried out qualitative research in Rome, where I worked for several years in the role as educator/social worker in some of the biggest Romani communities.