Associate ProfessorMaurizio Meloni

Maurizio Meloni is a leading international scholar in social theory and Science and Technology Studies with strong affiliations to the history/histories of biology, biopolitics, racism, and the health sciences. His long-term research agenda is cross-disciplinary and addresses long term patterns of racialization and embodiment of social effects in science and society in Europe and globally with an emphasis on epistemic justice and pluralization of systems of knowledge. This was also the subject of his ARC Future fellowship on Impressionable Bodies (2019-2023),

His last book (June 2026) is  Coloniality and Structural Othering in European Thought: A Racialized Canon. Reviewed by editorial critics as “‘(…) an extraordinary and fascinating text that effects a seismic temporal and geographic shift in our understanding of the forms of racialization that have scaffolded European colonialism” (Samantha Frost, Univ. of Illinois), the book explores long term patterns of racism in four key authors of the Western canon, from the Italian Renaissance to twentieth century social theory. Former books include: Political Biology: Science and Social Values in Human Heredity from Eugenics to Epigenetics | Springer Nature Link (2016, reprint 2018: Winner of the Human Biology Association Book Award in 2020.); Impressionable Biologies | From the Archaeology of Plasticity to the Sociology of Epigenetics (Routledge, 2019)

Co-edited books include Biosocial Matters: Rethinking Sociology-Biology Relations in the Twenty-First Century, 2016 Sage; and the The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society | Springer Nature Link (2018)

In preparation/under contract Maurizio is currently working on a ms. titled Necropolitics, Italian Style. Race, Genocide, and the Impossible Decolonization of a Country (Springer/Palgrave, expected June 2027)

Maurizio is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences where he also acts as convenor of the Sociology discipline.
Besides his ARC Future Fellowship, he has benefited from several research grants, including two consecutive Marie Curie fellowships, a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Chicago, funded visits at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG, Berlin), visiting professorship at The University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, DAAD and OEAD fellowships in Germany and Austria, and an annual membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (NJ). With colleagues Megan Warin and Emma Kowal, he was also awarded an ARC DP on Epigenetics and Indigenous Health. His articles have appeared in journals such as Body and Society, BioSocieties, The Sociological Review, Theory Culture and Society, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Economy and Society, American Journal of Human Biology, The Anthropocene Review, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Toronto Quarterly, History of the Human Sciences, GeoHumanities, Social Theory and Health, Social Studies of Science, Environmental Epigenetics, The Sociological Review, Sociology, and the British Journal of Sociology.

Find Maurizio's work at: ‪Maurizio Meloni‬ - ‪Google Scholar‬