Monday 22 June, 6.30pm
The Days of the Covstituents
with Fabrizio Castaldi, Secretary General of the Camera dei Deputati, and Marzia Maccaferri (Queen Mary University of London)
Chair: Nicoletta Manzione, UK Correspondent for RAI
A talk dedicated to the Camera dei Deputati’s podcast project “The Days of the Constituent Women”, which recounts the contribution of the twenty‑one women elected to the Constituent Assembly in creating Italian democracy, to follow and ideally complete the series of four workshops held at SIAL in March, which explored the role of these women in post‑war Italian society through history, debate, and reflection.
The event will feature the participation of the Camera dei Deputati’s Secretary General Fabrizio Castaldi and Professor Marzia Maccaferri (Queen Mary University of London), and aims to transform the memory of the Mothers of the Constitution into an opportunity for contemporary reflection on the role of women in democratic processes, on the value of civic participation, and on the relevance of European constitutional culture today.
In Italian with simultaneous translation in English
Through a dialogue between history, institutions, and contemporary narrative languages, the initiative seeks to highlight the importance of the voices of the Constituent Women —not only as symbolic figures of the nascent Republic, but as protagonists of a political season capable of building vision, mediation, and rights at a decisive moment in Italian history. The podcast “The Days of the Constituent Women” offers an intense and accessible reinterpretation of their experiences, restoring their humanity, political thought, and civic strength through archival materials, testimonies, and sound narration. In this context, London becomes the ideal place to open an international reflection on the relationship between democratic memory, European citizenship, and new generations.
The event will alternate moments of public conversation, listening to excerpts from the podcast, and readings of speeches by the Constituent Women, creating an immersive and participatory experience capable of engaging students, researchers, the Italian community abroad, and an international audience. At the heart of the meeting will be the theme of representation: from the right to vote won by Italian women to their presence in contemporary institutional and cultural life, questioning the challenges that remain open for European democracies.
The initiative thus aims to propose a living memory—active rather than celebratory—in which the stories of the women who contributed to writing the Italian Constitution can become a tool for understanding the present and imagining the future. An evening dedicated to the voices that helped write Italian democracy and that continue to speak to contemporary Europe.
Book your place HERE
Fabrizio Castaldi (Rome, 3 June 1971) is an Italian public official, Secretary General of the Chamber of Deputies. He graduated in law from La Sapienza University in May 1995. He qualified as a barrister and taught parliamentary law courses as an adjunct professor at Tor Vergata University and LUISS University in Rome. In June 1999, he won the public competition for parliamentary advisor to the Chamber of Deputies, where he held various positions in the assembly, parliamentary committees and General Affairs Office. In 2015 he was appointed Deputy Secretary General. On 29 December 2021, the Bureau unanimously appointed him Secretary General of the Chamber of Deputies. He is a lecturer at graduate and postgraduate courses.
Marzia Maccaferri is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. She is a political and intellectual historian whose research and teaching focus on British and European politics, the history of intellectuals, Italian populism and Brexit, and the reception and translation of Antonio Gramsci’s thought. She is currently working on a monograph titled The Global Legacy of Antonio Gramsci: Across the Political Right and Left, forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing in 2027. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, and she regularly contributes to the Italian newspaper Domani, the podcast Revolution on Rai Radio 3, and political magazines and journals including Jacobin, Tribune, and the Italian political newsletter Appunti.