Alice’s expertise in African Studies includes research in Tanzania (1988, 1989), Gambia (from 1992 to 2011) and Senegal (from 2006 to present), and a network of international collaboration with colleagues from North America, West Africa and several EU countries. Because of the historical orientation of her work (health systems and traditional medicine, memories of colonialism, the legacies of slavery, generations of international migrants, the historicity of African politics and economies, irregular migrations to Europe), elders and elderly people have been her principal interlocutors on the field.
Since 2006, she has directed a number of researchers on refugees, migrants and asylum seekers in Lombardia and Sicily, and supervised over twenty doctoral students, who are now working in international and national academic settings, and civil society organizations. After the completion of the ERC Consolidator Grant Project Shadows of Slavery in West Africa and Beyond. A Historical Anthropology, Alice is carrying out research on irregular migrations to Europe in the frame of the TRUST FUND – project AID-10733 – Emergency Initiative in Senegal and Guinea Bissau – led by ACRA Foundation. Since 2000, Alice Bellagamba is the scientific director of MEBAO (Missione Etnologica in Benin e Africa Occidentale), a research network on West Africa co-financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Italy).
In 2015, she was elected as representative of Professors in the
academic senate of Milan-Bicocca. Her institutional track includes the
Deputy Direction of the doctoral program in cultural and social
anthropology (since 2014), the Direction of the Master program in
Cultural and Social Anthropology of Milan-Bicocca (2012-2015) and of the
specialisation course in the Anthropology of Migration (2007-to
present), the Coordination of international relations and the Erasmus
exchange program for the Faculty of Education, University of
Milan-Bicocca (2006-2011).
From November 2004 to October 2005, she was Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bayreuth. In 2011, she was granted the Eurias Senior Fellowship in the frame of the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions and spent the 2011-2012 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Berlin. In 2013, she was visiting Faculty at the Gilder Lehrman Centre for the Study of Slavery and Abolition of the University of Yale, in 2014 visiting fellow at the University Cheick Anta Diop of Dakar, and in 2015 at the University of Abomey-Calavy (Bénin).
