Italian Criminal Anthropology and the Legacy of Cesare Lombroso in the Age of Totalitarianism

Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), the founding father of modern criminology, is best known for his theory of the “criminal man”. In a nutshell, Lombroso thought that criminality was biologically inherited and that criminals could be identified by physical stigmata that confirmed them as being atavistic or savage. The legacy of Lombroso is still controversial, as several historians have claimed that his biological conception of the “born criminal” contributed to the birth of scientific racism in the 20th century and consequently to the formation of Nazi ideology regarding euthanasia and the Holocaust. This project seeks to re-evaluate the legacy of Lombroso and the fate of criminal anthropology after his death by studying the relationship between criminal anthropology and fascism in Italy as well as the global embeddedness of the Italian school after 1909. By doing so, the research will contribute to existing debates on the politicization of criminal anthropology and scientific knowledge more generally, by combining attention for the local embeddedness of knowledge production with an analysis of its global implications.