Giuliana Chamedes is an Associate Professor in the Department of History. She received her PhD from Columbia University and focuses on international and global history, with additional focus on the place of Europe in the wider world. Her research centers on the history of internationalism, the Catholic Church and economic development.
Her first book, A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe, explores how World War I galvanized the central government of the Catholic Church to craft its own variety of internationalism, which was intended to rival both liberal and communist internationalism. Her second book, Failed Globalists: Economic Development, Decolonization, and the Demise of European Political Hegemony (in process), explains how Western Europe’s three leading political movements after World War II (Christian Democracy, socialism, and communism) sought to expand their influence both within Western Europe and in the decolonizing world through the crafting and implementation of rival economic development strategies.
A word from Leonora Neville, Chair of the History Department:
Professor Giuliana Chamedes joined the History Department in the fall of 2014 and quickly embarked on a revitalization of the study and teaching of international European history in our department and across campus. Professor Chamedes combines a stunning depth of scholarship with engagement in building communities of scholars among our students and faculty. She is a specialist in twentieth-century European international history whose first book, A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe (Harvard 2019), on the diplomacy and politics of the Vatican. Her second project, on European efforts to replace colonialism with ‘economic development’ projects in their former colonies, will extend the scope of Chamedes’ research even further to include India, Senegal, and Chile. In her teaching, Chamedes pushes students to independent research and community engagement. In her class on fascism, the students’ final presentations were made to our broader community at the Goodman Community Center. She has been named a Mellon Morgridge Professor for her work in creating innovative classes in the Humanities. We are delighted to have Professor Chamedes on our faculty.