Maria-Letizia completed her BSc in International Relations and History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2023, where she studied Indigenous dispossession in US history through a gender and cultural lens. During her time at LSE, she was the Managing Editor of student-led history journal The Webster Review of International History and worked as a research assistant for Prof. Joanna Lewis, cataloguing archival documents on Mau Mau prisoners in 1950s colonial Kenya.
During the Columbia-LSE program, Maria-Letizia's research focused on Black-Indigenous histories of collaboration in nineteenth-century Florida, specifically during the Second Seminole War (1835-42). Thanks to the Alliance Fellowship, she was able to conduct archival work in Washington, D.C. and the Seminole Nation of Florida on their Big Cypress Reservation. The resulting dissertation was awarded Columbia's Richard Hofstadter Dissertation Prize.
Throughout this program, Maria-Letizia further nurtured her interest in European memory studies, critical international law, and genocide studies. She also received training at the Columbia Journalism School, learning how to combine historical research methods with the conventions of journalistic writing. In this capacity, she carried out research on J. P. Morgan's patronage of photographer Edward S. Curtis and its impact on American perceptions of Indigenous communities - a project that she hopes to continue beyond the program.
She now works as the Editorial Assistant of the Journal of Genocide Research, ensuring the quality of published articles and expanding the journal's social media reach to non-academic audiences through recorded author interviews and short-form pieces. Maria-Letizia is also the co-host of the Blue Stockings history podcast, in which she and a fellow CU-LSE graduate dissect the cultural impact of historical fiction films and introduce audiences to relevant scholarship on historical topics shown on screen. She hopes to explore future opportunities in publishing, journalism, and museum interpretation.
