Francesca is a full-time PhD candidate at the department of International History. She works at the intersection of European integration, decolonisation and ideas about Europe, under the supervision of Professor Piers Ludlow and Dr David Motadel. She holds a BA in Humanities from Bologna University (Italy) with a thesis on Italian colonialism, and received her MRes in Political History cum laude from Leiden University (The Netherlands), writing a dissertation on illiberal conceptualizations of Europe.