Markus Merin

Markus Sam Merin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and a historian of contemporary Italy. His research is interested in political culture, organizing, and contention in Cold War Italy. His dissertation, tentatively titled “After Hegemony: The Italian Communist Party in Emilia-Romagna, 1976-1991,” investigates how the civil society networks and cultural identity of the Communist community in this traditional leftwing stronghold was radically altered by economic transformation and political crisis in the twilight years of Italy's first republic.

During the fellowship year, Markus will complete the remaining chapters of his dissertation and submit it for defense. The first chapter will examine Emilia-Romagna as a nodal point of the international left in the 1980s, while the second will cover the Italian Communist Party’s acrimonious dissolution in 1989.