Dr Marianna Astore

marianna astore
Researcher
University of Insubria (Varese)
Associate Member, University of Oxford History Faculty
marianna.astore@uninsubria.it

Marianna Astore is a Researcher at the University of Insubria (Varese) and has been an Associated Researcher with the GloCoBank project since autumn 2023. She was a Post-Doctoral Researcher on the GloCoBank project between June-Sept 2024 and continues to develop her research analysing the link between cross-border banking correspondents and migrant remittances, focusing on European migration to North and South America during the first globalization.

 

Research Interests

  • International economic relations
  • The history of payment systems and credit markets
  • Central banking history and its intersection with business history
  • Economic history of Fascist Italy

Marianna has a strong expertise in European contemporary financial history. Her Ph.D. thesis reconstructed Italian currency controls during the interwar period, focusing particularly on the role of the “Istituto Nazionale per i Cambi con l’Estero,” the first Italian foreign exchange office. Afterwards, she broadened the focus of her research—which previously mainly focused on Italy—to include comparisons with other European countries. From 2021 to 2023, she held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship at PSE (Paris School of Economics), working as the principal investigator of the project “Europe and Its Central Banks: Lessons from History (EUROCBH)”. The aim of EUROCBH was to focus on the role of central banks in the formation of national credit markets and industrial policies. She has also held a post-doctoral position at Bocconi University (Milan), and before joining GloCoBank was appointed as Jemolo Fellow at Nuffield College (University of Oxford).

 

Marianna's main publications include articles in national and international business history and economic journals, such as “We can’t pay”: How Italy Dealt with War Debts after World War I (with Michele Fratianni, Financial History Review, 2019). In the summer of 2024, her paper coauthored with Paolo Di Martino (University of Turin), "Branching vs Correspondents in Cross-Border Banking Expansion: Evidence from Italy, 1880s-1936," was awarded the best paper prize at the European Business History Annual Congress.

 

In 2022, she co-organized the workshop “International Macroeconomics in Historical Perspective,” sponsored by the European Macrohistory Network, the CEPR, and the Banque de France, and the workshop “Where is the Money? Financial Networks and the Geography of Credit Development,” held at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Vienna).

 

Marianna has significant teaching experience in Economic History, Business History, and Financial History.