Paola Schierano is a Post-doc Fellow at the University of Pavia within the project “Transnational Aging between Italy and Africa: Anthropological Perspectives” (TAIA), working on the Tunisian diaspora and Aging in the internal area of Italy.

In 2016, she earned her Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Turin. In 2021, she completed with honors a Ph.D. in Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Milano-Bicocca.

Her main research interests focus on mobility, coexistences, ethnical belonging and postcolonial assimilation in the European Overseas. She has conducted ethnography in the islands of La Réunion and Mayotte (French Departments in the South-West Indian Ocean) studying the short-term impact of Mayotte's departmentalization on regional mobility dynamics as well as on collective representations.

She has been Visiting Student at the University of La Réunion (EA 7387 D.I.R.E. - Déplacements, Identités, Regards, Ecritures) and Visiting Researcher at the Laboratory of Political Anthropology (LAP) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS/CNRS) in Paris.

In 2022, she has been awarded a Research Mobility Grant (Atlas Program - 3 months) by Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris) and Fondazione Luigi Einaudi Onlus (Torino), in order to conduct an ethnographic fieldwork on Mahorais community in the Ile-de-France Region.

Currently, she is Adjunct Professor of Pacific Cultures and Societies at the University of Milano-Bicocca and she is also member of “Arcipelago Europa” a Research Center of the CPS Department of Excellence of the University of Turin that promotes the study of the European Overseas.