Francesca’s academic work intersects education policy, social and political theory, and inclusion, being primarily shaped by scholarship in education policy sociology, Critical Inclusion Studies, and Critical Disability Studies.
In particular, she focuses on the analysis of the relations between global perspectives on inclusion and national and local policy enactments, the role played by major political and economic dynamics (especially neoliberalism and privatisation) in steering such enactments, and the impact that these have for equity of opportunities and educational experiences of disabled, minoritized and disadvantaged children at the intersection of multiple social markers.
She has a particular interest in analysing how processes of policy enactment shape education governance and individuals’ self-governance, genealogically exploring how historical, cultural, and political conditions shape subjectivities and individuals’ and social groups’ possibilities of being and doing in, and beyond, educational contexts. My most recent work explores the modalities in which digital governance shapes subjectivities, teachers’ experiences, and the forms of state education.
In her work, she problematise the limits that the project of modernity and the Enlightenment, rooted in the Global North, pose for thinking education otherwise. Through a decolonial lens, she exposes the ableist, racist, patriarchal and classist dynamics shaped by a certain capitalist formation of the state, questioning the Western roots of Sociology of Education and inclusion policy studies. her aim is to decolonise inclusive education in ways that respect other modalities of being and doing in educational communities. Currently, she is exploring such possibilities through the encounter of digital and non-digital technologies in educational contexts.
Her other interest lies in ableism and policy enactment in higher education, and the impact that neoliberal governance has for disabled students’ experiences and subjectivities in increasingly ableist and exclusionary higher education institutions, you can read some of her recent work.
Francesca’s doctoral thesis was a policy genealogy of disability in the Italian higher education and currently she is collaborating with disabled student activists in higher education co-researching modalities to make universities more socially just, inclusive and equitable contexts
Her research mobilises qualitative analytical tools, many of them borrowed from Foucault’s toolbox, and she merges dispositif, assemblage and network theory with governmentality studies, critical policy and discourse analysis and ethnographic methods. Her perspective embraces co-production and collaboration with local groups and communities to validate modalities of thinking and doing that are other than the ones exported and mobilised by Western countries, validating local expertise, community knowledge and pluralising modalities of being.
Her research agenda is always impact-oriented and committed to co-create change towards more equitable and socially just education systems. To do so, she collaborate with individuals, communities and grassroots organisations that experience first-hand marginalisation and discrimination and steer education policy on a government level, so to impact on school experiences and learning path-ways and shape more inclusive educational futures.