War Volunteers in Modern Times

4 December

9.45: Welcome and Introduction

13.00: Keynote
David Malet (American University): Best Practices in Rehabilitation and Reintegration

11.45 – 13.00 Italian Transnational Fighters in the early Twentieth Century. Chair: Elena Bacchin

Francesco Fusi (University of Pisa): Unwanted, Dangerous, and on the move: Italian volunteers in
the Anglo-Boer War and its aftermath (1899-1902)
Roberto Carocci (Roma 3 University): Returnees’ trajectories. Italian transnational fighters between
the First World War to Fascism”
Salvador Lima (European University Institute, Florence): The French Foreign legion and Italian
Volunteers in the Interwar Period, 1919-1939

15.30 – 16.30 Global Fighters during the Second World War. Chair: Maddalena Valacchi

Riccardo Abram Correggia (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa): Between Ideology and Personal
Inspirations. Jamaican and Jewish Arab Palestinian Women’s Reason for Enlisting in the British
Army in WWII Europe
Matteo D’avanzo (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa): Fighting from the South. Jewish South African
War Volunteers and their Postwar Legacies

17.00 – 18.00: Foreign Fighters and Decolonization in Africa. Chair: Roberto Tesei

Mohamed Oussama Benatallah (Amir Abd El kader University for Islamic Sciences, Constantine):
Forgotten Soldiers. Senegalese Recruits in the Algerian War
Gabriele Siracusano (University of Trento): Internationalizing Conflicts. The Return of Italian
Volunteers from Algeria and Congo

09.30 – 11.00: From Indochina to Vietnam. Chair: Umberto Tulli

Máté Rigó (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich): Forgotten Soldiers: Foreign Legionnaires
between Indochina and Stalinist Eastern Europe (1944-1963)
Francesco Frizzera (MITAG – Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra): Exhibit: Forgotten Vietnam.
Italians in the French Foreign Legion and the War in Indochina
Enrico Acciai (University of Rome, Tor Vergata): Antifascism Under the Strain of Decolonisation:
deserters from the French Foreign Legion in Indochina

11.30 – 13.00: The Global Cold War and its Legacies. Chair: Laura Chiara Cecchi

Michael Auwers (Centre for War and Society/University of Antwerp): “But We fought Communism
over there!” The Reintegration of Belgian Korean war volunteers into their home society
Gerardo Sánchez Nateras (CIDE – Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas): The State and
V the Internationalists during the Wars in Central America
Alexander Evans (LSE – London School of Economics): Motivations, Trajectories and Legacies of
Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Kashmir, 1980-2020

15.00 – 17.00: Contemporary Perspectives. Chair: Alessandra Russo

Sara Rguig (National School of Applied Sciences/ UAE – Tetouan): Gendered Discourses in War
Participation: Examining Gender and Language and Gender Roles among Foreign Fighters
Dmitry Shlapentokh (Indiana University, South Bend): The Foreign Fighters in Ukraine. The Case of
Different Reasons for Participation
Matteo Benussi (Università di Venezia Ca’ Foscari) Ultracitizens or Warriors? Preliminary
anthropological observations on foreign volunteers in the Russo-Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts
Emanuele Bussa (Freelance Journalist): A Foreign Journalist among Foreign Fighters in Ukraine

17.25: Concluding Remarks