Lucy Riall is an Irish historian. She was a professor of history at

Birkbeck, University of London , mottoeng = Advice comes over nightTranslation used by Birkbeck. , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £4.3 m (2014) , budget = £10 ...

, and is currently a professor in the Department of History and Civilisation at the

European University Institute The European University Institute (EUI) is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral teaching and research institute and an independent body of the European Union with juridical personality, established by the member states to contr ...

in Florence.

Biography

Riall studied at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 milli ...

and the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. She was a lecturer in Modern European history at the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...

before moving to Birkbeck. Since 2004 she has been editor of the journal ''European History Quarterly''. Among her many prestigious awards are a visiting professorship at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and a senior fellowship at the University of Freiburg's Institute of Advanced Study. One of the leading experts on modern Italy, Riall has written on nineteenth-century state-formation and

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

and

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

. Several of her books treat the history of the

Risorgimento The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

; ''Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero'' (2007) examined the popular cult of

Giuseppe Garibaldi Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi ( , ;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as ''Gioxeppe Gaibado''. In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as ''Jousé'' or ''Josep''. 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, pa ...

as a global cultural phenomenon.Reviews: Roland Sart
H-Net review
October 2007; David Gilmou
"The lion or the donkey?"
, ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...

'', 10 May 2007; Tim Parks
"The Insurgent: Garibaldi and his enemies"
''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', 9 July 2007; Alexander Still
"The Hero Machine"
''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...

'', 16 August 2007 Riall speaks fluent Italian and she appears frequently on Italian TV and radio (RAI) as well as on the BBC.

Works

*''The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society, and National Unification'', Routledge, 1994. *''Sicily and the Unification of Italy: Liberal Policy and Local Power, 1859-1866'', Oxford University Press, 1998. *(ed. with David Laven) ''Napoleon’s Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe'', Berg, 2000. *''Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero'', Yale University Press, 2007 (Italian translation, Laterza, 2007). *''Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (Italian translation, Donzelli 2009). *"Martyr Cults in Nineteenth-Century Italy," ''The Journal of Modern History'' Vol. 82, No. 2, June 2010. *''Under the Volcano: Revolution in a Sicilian Town'', Oxford University Press, 2013.

References

External links

EUI profileBirkbeck homepageGaribaldi: the patriot as global hero
*

Alumni of the London School of Economics Alumni of the University of Cambridge Historians of Italy Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{UK-historian-stub