Research: In the Footsteps of Nonviolence in the Mediterranean. Interpreting a 'Theory-Practice' through the Study of Transnational Encounters between Political Subjects between 1970 and 2025.
Virginia Fiume is a PhD Candidate in the National PhD Programme in Peace Studies (Curriculum: Dynamics, Processes, and Actors in International Relations) at La Sapienza Università di Roma. Her doctoral project, "In the Footsteps of Nonviolence in the Mediterranean", investigates how nonviolence develops as a theory-practice through transnational encounters between social movements in the Mediterranean region between 1970 and 2025. Drawing on archival research, qualitative methods, and a framework that brings political science, social history, and critical theory into dialogue, her work traces the ways in which nonviolent activists autonomously theorize their own practice — and argues that this theoretical production, largely invisible to existing scholarship, constitutes a foundational dimension of nonviolence itself. In 2026, she was awarded the Postgraduate Vibeke Sørensen Grant by the Historical Archives of the European Union (EUI) to support her archival research on the engagement of Italian nonviolent movements with European institutions between 1983 and 1999 — a thread of inquiry that forms part of her broader doctoral project on nonviolence in the Mediterranean.
Before commencing her PhD, Virginia was a Visiting Fellow (February–June 2025) and Policy Leader Fellow (2023–2024) at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, where she led the Mapping Nonviolence in the Mediterranean project and studied the relationship between nonviolent direct action and participatory democracy. In this role, she co-organised several seminars, including 'Nonviolence as Democratic Innovation' (UACES Grant, European Nonviolent Network), 'Understanding Palestinian Politics with Palestinian Voices' (with COSMOS – Scuola Normale Superiore), and the STG Talk 'Trust, Care, and Power: Making Love with Democracy'.
She has also served as Research Assistant at EUI on two projects: 'The Community of Practice of the Ukraine Recovery Conference' (PI: Miranda Loli) and 'UNLIB – Understanding Illiberal Policy Diffusion' (PI: Alexander Mesarovich).
For over twenty years, Virginia has been an active participant and organiser in grassroots mobilisations and civil society organisations. As co-founder and Co-President of EUMANS (2019–2023), a pan-European movement for popular initiative, she coordinated European Citizens' Initiatives, transnational campaigns, and participatory processes from Brussels. She has also been involved in civil disobedience actions in the context of the broader movement for the legalisation of euthanasia in Italy, led by the Associazione Luca Coscioni — an engagement that informs her situated understanding of nonviolent direct action and its relationship with legal and institutional frameworks.
Her insights on democratic dissensus are featured in Dissensus over Liberal Democracy: Key Conversations with Leading Voices (Coman, R. et al., Springer, 2026). She holds an MA in Anthropology of Media from SOAS, University of London, and a BA from the Università degli Studi di Milano. She combines academic research with extensive field experience in contexts including the Occupied Palestinian Territories.