I am Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Universidad del País Vasco. My main field of expertise, and my current research, regard Mediterranean history in the late Middle Ages with a particular interest in social and political thought. In 1998, as a graduate student, under the supervision of Stephan Epstein I began to study urban history of the Crown of Aragon and the links among the economy, institutions, and society. This topic characterizes my PhD dissertation. I did my PhD research mainly at London's British Library and in Barcelona at the Consejo Superior de Investigacion Científicas and Archivo de la Corona de Aragón. For my post-doc at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (University of Toronto), I expanded my field of research by focusing on the exchange of diverse cultural traditions among the countries of the Crown of Aragon and the royal policy to co-ordinate these countries. At the same time, I examined how civic ceremony and ritual regulated several forms of social relations. At the Medieval Institute of Notre Dame University, as postdoctoral associate, I focused on the interplay between oral and written culture.

With reference to my research agenda, I am looking at the intersection between written and oral memory, emotion and politics of social control in late medieval Sicily analyzed in the broader western Mediterranean context. I approach these themes through an analysis of rituals of passages. With regard to my teaching experience, I taught a broad range of courses on medieval European history and history of medieval and early modern law.

I have published extensively on medieval urban history in the late Middle Ages. My main publications are: (books) Governments of the universitates. Urban communities of Sicily in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. I magistrati cittadini. Gli ufficiali scrutinati in Sicilia da Martino I ad Alfonso V, Caltanissetta-Roma: Sciascia, 2008. (Book Contributions) Citizens and Freedom in medieval Sicily, in Annliese Nef (ed.), A Companion to Medieval Palermo. The History of a Mediterranean city from 600 to 1500, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 489-523. Presentation and practice of violence in late medieval Sicily in Piazza, Polizzi and Randazzo, in Cohn Jr. S.-Ricciardelli F. (eds.), The culture of violence in late Medieval and Early Modern Italy, Florence: Le Lettere, 2012, pp. 145-166 (in Georgetown University's series). Kingdom of Sicily, in Gamberini A.- Lazzarini I. (eds.), The Renaissance State Revised. Italy in the 14th- early 16th Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 9-29, 515-517. Note preliminari sul consilium civium di Palermo, 1448-1458, in P. Corrao-E. I. Mineo (eds.), Dentro e fuori la Sicilia. Studi di storia per Vincenzo D'Alessandro, Roma: Viella, 2009, pp. 251-265. (Journal Articles) Aragonese Sicily as a model of late medieval state building, in "Viator", 44, 1 (2013), pp. 217-249. Gli spazi sacri dei rituali cittadini: politiche di inclusione e di esclusione fra pretese di disciplinamento e infrazione delle norme, in "Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo", 7 (2010), pp. 85-94. Identità cittadina e dominio territoriale. Il caso dell'universitas di Randazzo nel tardo Medioevo, in "Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome", 120/1 (2008), pp. 173-188. Le «Consuetudines terre Platee»: un esempio di cultura dello scritto, in Isabella Lazzarini (ed.), Scrittura e potere. Pratiche documentarie e forme di governo nell'Italia tardomedievale, "Reti Medievali-Rivista", IX, 1 (2008). Ritorno al Cristianesimo, in "Medioevo", 4 (2007), pp. 42-49. I consigli "populares" del 29 aprile e del 6 maggio 1450. Confronto istituzionale e conflitto politico a Palermo, "Reti Medievali-Rivista", VI, 1 (2005). Il tumulto popularis del 1450. Conflitto politico e società urbana a Palermo, in "Archivio Storico Italiano", 163 (2005), pp. 43-86. Istituzioni e società urbane in Sicilia, 1392-1409, in "Società e Storia", 105 (2004), pp. 461-486. Ėlites di governo e mastre ad Agrigento fra Trecento e Quattrocento, in "Anuario de estudios medievales", 32/2 (2002), pp. 845-877.