Position/Role

Assistant Professor in History of Science and Technology at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice

Professional career

In 2007 she graduates in Philosophy with honors at the University of Bari (Italy). In May 2011 she obtains her Ph.D. in the History of Science and Technology from the same university. Her thesis supervisor is prof. S. Longo of the Department of chemistry.

From 2011 to 2013, she is a post-doc fellow of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici and later of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. In 2016, she is a researcher in Paris at the Centre Alexandre Koyré of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and until 2018 she is also an Honorary Research Associate at University College London.

In 2017, she obtains the Qualification aux fonctions de Maitre de conférences (French Associate Professor) for the section 72, and in 2021, she obtaines the National Scientific Qualification  for sector 11/C2.

Since 2017 she’s member of the Advisory Committee of the International Conference of the History of Chemistry, by the Working Party on the History of Chemistry of EuChemS.

She is also an Associate Researcher at the LabEx HASTEC (EPHE-PSL) - Laboratoire d'Excellence Histoire, Anthropologie, Savoirs, Techniques et Croyances (France).

Currently she teaches Philosophy and Politics of Life and Environment for the first Italian Master’s Degree in Environmental Humanities at the Ca’ Foscari University.

Scientific results

Historian of science with an expertise in the development of 18th century chemistry (with a focus on the South of Italy) and of natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions.

She organized with M. Thèbaud-Sorger the international conference “The Workshop of Nature. Production of Material Knowledge, Material Production of Knowledge” (Paris, November 10th, 2016) financed by LabEx HASTEC, Centre Koyré (EHESS-CNRS-MNHN), Groupe d'histoire de la chimie (French Chemical Society).

Among her teaching experiences, she gave a lecture during the Semaine interdisciplinaire Université Paris Science et Lettres: “Chemistry in history, philosophy, art and literature” for the MD students of Mines Paris Tech, Chimie ParisTech, École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI).

In December 2020 she organised with M. Piazza the webinar Fear and Disruption of Habits during the Global Pandemic at the University of Roma Tre, with the hypothesis of a parallel between pandemics and natural risks.

Guerra is currently pursuing an environmental studies project titled “Knowledge Transformations in Geology: A Comparative Inquiry” under the FARE Project Positioned Cosmology in Early Modernity: The Geo-Praxis of Water-and-Land Management in Venice, which received funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Research, the ERC Consolidator Project Early Modern Cosmology and the first Italian Planck Partner Group The Water City. The Political Epistemology of Hydrogeological Praxis.

Editorial work and publications

Since 2017 she’s been a member of the editorial board of the journal “Archivio storico per le province napoletane” (founded in 1876).

Below is a selection of her editorial works:

[2020] Guerra C. Maria Bakunin (1873-1960). Chimica d’amore e d’anarchia, in Mezzogiorno di scienza. Ritratti d'autore di grandi scienziati del Sud, a cura di Greco P. Edizioni Dedalo: 63-78.

[2020] Guerra C. La grotte du chien : un laboratoire européen des connaissances chimiques avant la création de laboratoires institutionnels à Naples. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences, 70: 238-65.

[2018] Guerra C. Les artilleurs traducteurs et leurs ennemis. La première traduction italienne du Traité élémentaire de Lavoisier à Naples. La Révolution française, 13.

[2017] Guerra C. Lavoisier e Parthenope. Contributo ad una storia della chimica del regno di Napoli. Società Napoletana di Storia Patria & Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici.

[2016] Guerra C. Reazioni chimiche e reazioni emotive al Vesuvio. Le eruzioni del XVIII secolo nelle raccolte della biblioteca della Società napoletana di storia patria. Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 2-3: 472-91.

[2016] Guerra C, Il referto radiologico a misura di utente: è possibile?. Il giornale italiano di Radiologia Medica, Schiavon F, Dazzi G, Guerra C, Guglielmi G, Rotondo A. (eds.), 3: 196-99.

[2015] Guerra C. If you don’t a have a good laboratory, find a good volcano: Mount Vesuvius as a natural chemical laboratory in eighteenth century Italy, Ambix, 62(3): 245-65.

[2010] Guerra C. Chimica per le donne, in Scorci di Storia della Scienza, Frank M. L. e Pogliano C. (a cura di), PLUS Pisa University Press: 127-39.

[2009] Coautrice dei capitoli 1, 4 e 7 in Science, Mind, and Creativity: The Bari Symposium. L. L'Abate, P. De Giacomo, M. Capitelli & S. Longo (eds.), Nova Science Publishers.

[2007] Guerra C. Nicola Andria e l’ingresso della chimica pneumatica nel Regno di Napoli. Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, serie V, vol. XXXI, parte II, tomo II: 139-52.

Awards and prizes

2017 Book of cultural value Lavoisier e Parthenope (Naples 2017) by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

Her first book, Lavoisier e Parthenope (Naples 2017), was awarded the Prize for Young Historians by the International Academy of the History of Science. Every two years, it honors a first work in the History of Science.