Ilaria Macconi

International fellow

Research interests

History of religion, church history and the history of religious congregations, gender history, history of mentality, history of secularization and transformation processes, interreligious dialogue.

Education and academic experience

Ilaria Macconi graduated from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in Political Science. In 2010 she defended her PhD thesis at the University of Freiburg (Switzerland) “Miséricorde”. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the ‘crisis’ of the Catholic parish and the erosion of traditional religiosity forms in Italy and Switzerland in the 1950s (original title: Crisi della parrocchia e erosione del tradizionale stile di vita dei cattolici in Italia e in Svizzera negli anni Cinquanta. I casi campione nella diocesi di Losanna, Ginevra e Friburgo, nella diocesi di Lugano e in quella di Porto-Santa Rufina). She worked as a research assistant at the University of Freiburg (Switzerland) for the Department of Communication Sciences and for the History Department. At the same university she was also a lecturer in contemporary history. On behalf of the Swiss History Society she organized the Third Swiss Congress of Historical Sciences (Freiburg, 7-9 February 2013). She was also the foreign correspondent for a Swiss newspaper and later cooperated with the Centro di Studi Dehoniani for the electronic publication of Léon Dehon’s correspondence.
Between 2002 and 2011 Ilaria Macconi was a lecturer at the University of Freiburg; she taught courses on various subjects of Swiss and Italian contemporary history as well as on European historiography, historical methodology and oral history. Since 2017 she has held sporadic courses in Nairobi about the methods and sources of history.
She is currently working on the following projects: a book on the History of the Consolata Missionary Sisters in Kenya; an academic exchange program between FSCIRE and the Tangaza University College in Nairobi about interreligious dialogue; as a curator of the volume Variations and Encounters of Religious Experiences in East Africa: History, Actors and Challanges.

Featured publications

Monographs

I. Macconi, Crisi della parrocchia ed erosione del tradizionale stile di vita dei cattolici negli anni Cinquanta, Locarno, Dadò, 2017.

C. Bosshart-Pfluger, I. Macconi Heckner, The Ursulines of Fribourg and the Sacred Heart Sisters of Rome stance on the challenges of the modern world in the 1950s and 1960s. Comparative view on their daily life and vocations on the threshold of the Second Vatican Council [manuscript].

Articles

I. Macconi, Cristiano-sociali: il precedente diverso (1939-1948), «Il Bianco e il Rosso» 46-47 (1993), pp. 51-54.

I. Macconi, Tempo libero: i luoghi della sociabilità. La parrocchia negli anni Cinquanta, «Storia in Lombardia» 1-2 (1995), pp. 411-430.

I. Macconi, Crisi della parrocchia in Italia negli anni Cinquanta, «Studium» 4 (1996), pp. 563-581.

L. Bosshart, I. Macconi Heckner, Media Entertainment, «Communication Research Trends» 18 (1998), pp. 3-38.

I. Macconi, La funzione di coesione dei mass-media in Svizzera: dal punto di vista dei giornalisti, «Medienwissenschaft Schweiz», 2 (1999), pp. 44-46.

I. Macconi, Erosione del tradizionale stile di vita dei cattolici in Italia e in Svizzera negli anni 1950, «RSSRC» 96 (2002), pp. 41-51.

I. Macconi, La situation religieuse dans le diocèse de Lugano après 1945: transformation et crise, «RSSRC» 105 (2011), pp. 297-306.

I. Macconi, La «politicizzazione» della vita religiosa in Italia nel secondo dopoguerra, «RSSRC» 106 (2012), pp. 375-391.

C. Bosshart-Pfluger, I. Macconi Heckner, Dritte Schweizerische Geschichtstage. Freiburg 7.-9. Februar 2013 «global-local», «SZRKG» 107 (2013), pp. 515-517.

C. Bosshart-Pfluger, I. Macconi Heckner, Tra crisi e «aggiornamento»: le Orsoline di Anne de Xainctonge e le Suore del Sacro Cuore di Gesù nel lungo secondo dopoguerra. Zwischen Krise und «aggiornamento»: Die Ursulinen von Anne de Xainctonge und die Sacré-Cœur Schwestern in der langen Nachkriegszeit, «SZRKG» 109 (2015), pp. 345-366.

Volumes edited

L. Bosshart, I. Macconi Heckner et al. (eds), Medienpolitik vs. Medienpraxis. Journalistisches Dilemma in einem mehrsprachigen Land, Report for the Federal Office of Communications, December 1997 [manuscript].

Chapters in books

Eglise et société: la “sécularisation dans le diocèse de Porto-Santa Rufina dans les années 1950, in Le cardinal Tisserant (1884-1972). Une grande figure française, Actes du Colloque international organisé à Toulouse le 22 et 23 novembre 2002, Toulouse, Groupe de recherche en histoire immédiate, 2003, pp. 147-158.

Reviews

​L. Planzi, Luigi Sturzo e il Cantone Ticino. La terra che gli diede voce sfidando il fascismo (1929-1947), Locarno, Armando Dadò Editore, 2011, pp. 417, in «RSSRC» 105 (2011), pp. 554-556.

U. Altermatt, Cattolicesimo e mondo moderno, Locarno, Dadò, 1996, in «Cristianesimo nella storia» 22 (2002), pp. 542-554.