Stefania Bortolotti

Stefania Bortolotti is a PhD candidate in pedagogy at the Free University of Bozen, Italy. She is a visiting PhD student at the ASC Leiden. Her research focuses on community engagement in the prevention of youth violence in urban Cape Verde. The research highlights the role of the political action of civil society and analyzes the possibilities and the limits of the action of community-based NGOs in mediating with both national and international institutions in the context of a postcolonial state, where participation outside the partisan logic is relatively limited.

Stefania holds a bachelor’s degree in Intercultural education from the Florence University, Italy and two masters’ degrees in Cultural Mediation from the Verona University of Education, Italy and in “Social Pedagogy and fight against youth violence” at the Ca’ Foscari, Venice University and funded by Eu’s Daphne Programme.

From 2010 to 2015, she worked as a lecturer in the Instituto Superior de Ciências Jurídicas e Sociais and Universidade de Santiago in Praia, Cape Verde on the themes of groups dynamics, community development and social mediation. In Cape Verde, she led some communities based projects with Fundação Esperança and the UN in the field of social inclusion and youth violence prevention. In 2013, this project received the Human Rights Award in the category "Combating Violence and Promoting a Culture of Peace". In 2014 she worked for the social movement, Korrenti di Ativiztas, Pilorinhu, a community based organization in Achada Grande Frente, Praia.

Currently, she is the president of Kariba, a Panafrican diaspora association working in the field of global education, African development (Somalia and Mozambique) and the promotion of the role of African diaspora and refugees in Italy. She is a member of Sociocinema, a cultural association of participatory cinema and social field,  and director of the short film “My name is Wasky” (Italy, 2017) on the story of Wasky: a boy, a rapper and Ghanaian refugee living in Italy since 2015.