Dr. Elisa Lanari

Elisa Lanari is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity, where she is carrying out the project, “Diversity and the afterlives of welcome in Italian mountain towns”.

Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Elisa researches how people and communities mobilize around issues of diversity and racialized inequality, a focus she has developed through research in so-called “new immigrant destinations” in both the US South and rural mountain Italy.

Supported by the Wenner-Gren and US National Science Foundation, Elisa’s PhD research explored how migrants and BIPOC residents reshaped the social life, privatized spaces, and conservative politics of US suburbia. It focused on one suburban community of Atlanta, Georgia, combining ethnography with archival research to trace its history and transformations from the post-Civil Rights to the post-Trump era.

Prior to joining the MPI, Elisa was a Visiting Researcher at the SSIIM UNESCO Chair of the IUAV University of Venice, Italy, where she collaborated in two AMIF-funded projects engaging local communities in designing initiatives to support migrants’ social and spatial inclusion. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University (2019), an MA in Cultural Anthropology, Ethnology, and Ethno-Linguistics (2010) and a BA in Philosophy (2007) from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy.

Research projects

• Diversity and the afterlives of welcome in Italian mountain towns

Publications

Journal Articles

Lanari, E. (2023). Latina M(other)work against racism: Living with legal precarity in suburban Atlanta. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 46(2), 316–337. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2022.2110382

Lanari, E. (2022). Speaking up, rising above: Latina lived citizenship in the metropolitan US South. Citizenship Studies, 26(1), 38–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2021.2011143

Lanari, E. (2019). Envisioning a New City Center: Time, Displacement, and Atlanta’s Suburban Futures. City & Society, 31(3), 365–391. https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12224

Lanari, E. (2017). Excluded from ‘Everybody’s Neighborhood’? Constructing Sandy Springs’ New City Center. Atlanta Studies. https://doi.org/10.18737/atls20170209

Contributions to a Collected Edition

Lanari, E. (2022). ‘Here, Morality Is a Sense of Entitlement’: Citizenship, Deservingness and Inequality in Suburban America. In J. Tošić & A. Streinzer (Eds.), Ethnographies of Deservingness: Unpacking Ideologies of Distribution and Inequality (pp. 222–250). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Lanari, E., & Mafizzoli, L. (2021). Pensare la contemporaneità [thinking about the contemporary]. In G. Ligi (Ed.), I colori dell’Antropologia (pp. 392–432). Giunti TVP Editori.

Other Publications

Garofalo, L., Lanari, E., & Cavicchioli, M. (2020, September 10). Sounds Fishy? Retrieved from Anthropology News website: https://www.anthropology-news.org/articles/sounds-fishy/

Lanari, E. (2020). What Happened in Georgia? On Suburbs and Other Anthropological Blind Spots – Home Field. Retrieved from HOME/FIELD website: https://www.homefieldanthro.org/2022/01/26/what-happened-in-georgia/