Potì is a modern historian with a background in international studies. His research revolves around the entangled processes of state- and empire-building in the Euro-Mediterranean area, and their interactions with the global political and legal order. Professor Potì is currently completing a book manuscript examining the contestation and re-negotiation of British, French, Italian, and Spanish imperial rule in the Middle East in the early aftermath of World War One. In the meantime, he has presented his ongoing research at some twenty academic workshops and conferences throughout Europe, and his scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals.
Since 2015, Professor Potìhas offered a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses to AUR students in the International Relations & Global Politics and Peace Studies programs and supervised a dozen capstone and Master theses. Meanwhile, in 2020, he held a post-doctoral research fellowship in Modern History at the German Historical Institute in Rome.
RESEARCH FIELDS
- International, Global and Transimperial History
- Modern Europe
- Euro-Mediterranean Imperial and Post-Imperial Systems
- Nations and Nationalism(s)
- Theory and History of International Law
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
- ‘The League of Nations and the Post-Ottoman Recolonization of the Nile Valley: The Imperial Matryoshka of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1922–1924’, Journal of Global History (accepted for publication, forthcoming).
- Review of Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), and Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmeier (eds.), Global History, Globally (London: Blomsbury, 2018), European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire, 7 January 2021 (DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2020.1859180).
- ‘Gli esclusi della pace? Il Wafd egiziano tra internazionalismo e impero, 1919–1922’, Rivista italiana di storia internazionale, 2:1 (2019), 55–78 (DOI: 10.30461/94648).
- ‘Un microcosme de l’entre-deux-guerres : La Guerre du Rif (1921–1926) et la reconfiguration du complexe impérial euro-méditerranéen’, Cahiers de civilisation espagnole contemporaine, 18:1 (2017), published online (URL: ; DOI: 10.4000/ccec.6650).
SELECTED ACADEMIC CONFERENCES
- ‘The Matryoshka of Empire: Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the League of Nations, 1922–1924’, ‘Decolonization and International Organizations’, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 25–26 January 2019.
- ‘Flirting with Lenin in Paris: The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 and the French Left’, ‘The Peripheries of the European Revolutionary Process(es), 1917– 23’, European University Institute, Florence, 5–7 October 2017.
- ‘Pushing Anti-Colonialism in the Trans-Imperial Space: Egyptian and Libyan Petitions to France (1918–1924)’, ‘In-Between Empires: Trans-Imperial History in a Global Age’, Freie Universität Berlin, 15–16 September 2017.
- ‘Bomb‐Throwing and Civilizing Missions: The League of Nations and Counter‐Insurgency in the Mandates System (1919–1939)’, 4th Congress of the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH), École Normale Superieure, Paris, 4–7 September 2014.
- ‘Supra-National Belongings and Transnational Mobilization in the Era of National Self-Determination: The Case of Middle Eastern Petitions to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919’, 24th ASEN conference on ‘Nationalism and Belonging’, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1–3 April 2014.
MEDIA
- With Simon Jackson, ‘La Syrie et l’action internationale’, op-ed, Huffington Post (French edition), 15 December 2012, (URL: ).
TEACHING AT AUR
BA program in International Relations and Global Politics
- POL 120 – Introduction to the American Political System.
- HST 200 – History of Modern Italy.
- HST 201 – Survey of Western Civilization (I).
- HST 202 – Survey of Western Civilization (II).
- HST 203 – Survey of American History.
- ECPO 204 – Introduction to the European Union.
- HST 305 – History of Modern Europe.
- POL 305 – Political Movements in Europe.
- POL 314 – Conflict and Peace in the in the Mediterranean.
- POL 320 – The Three C’s of War: Causes, Cures and Consequences.
MA program in Peace Studies
- PST 511 – Peace, Politics and Religion.
- PST 514 – Democracy and Government: Contemporary Challenges.