Turtur, Noelle

Noelle Turtur is a doctoral candidate in Modern European history with a focus on Italy and the Italian Empire. Her examines everyday life and labor of Italians in Italy, the Italian Empire, and in migrant communities. Her work engages with social and political history, comparative settler colonialism, the sociology and history of families, political economy, and settler colonialism.

Her dissertation studies the everyday life and labor of Italian settlers in Ethiopia during the fascist occupation. Studying how Italians lived and worked in various economic industries and regions of Ethiopia, her dissertation explores the consciousness and lived
experiences of Italian men and women who migrated to occupied-Ethiopia, their relations with local populations, their fascist supervisors, and the regime’s colonial experiment, which sought to exploit resources and labor more intensely than before. In the past, she has been the recipient of a DAAD Intensive Language Course Grant, the Kathleen M. Gash Fellowship, Council for European Studies Conference Travel Award, And the Wollemborg International Travel Fellowship.

Experience

A native of Peekskill, New York, Noelle graduated from the University of Chicago with honors in 2014. As an undergraduate, Noelle spent a year as an exchange student at the University of Bologna. Prior to attending Columbia, she worked at The Bronx Defenders in the criminal defense practice. At Columbia, Noelle has been the co-organizer of the European History and Politics Workshop (2016-2018), Social Chair of the Graduate History Association (2016-2017), the Graduate Student Assistant to the President’s Global Innovation Fund Fellowship for Research in European Archives (2016-2017), and a Teaching Fellow for numerous history department courses.

She is currently a Core Preceptor in Contemporary Civilizations.