PhD, University of Geneva
Dr Carolina Topini is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project Traveling feminisms: women’s health movements and reproductive rights activism across borders, 1970s-2000s (Return CH Postdoc.Mobility). Before joining the Geneva Graduate Institute, Dr Topini was a SNSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender History, University of Glasgow (Sept 2024 – Aug 2025), and at the Institute for Global Health, University College London (Sept 2023– Aug 2024), where she researched the history of global women's health activism between the 1970s and the 2000s, with a particular focus on debates around population control and contraceptive safety. Though conducted in a historical dimension, her work is deeply concerned with deepening contemporary conversations around reproductive justice.
Her PhD thesis, entitled “Travels, encounters, translations. The making of a transnational feminism in the 1970s-1990s (Italy, Europe, United States)” [in French], investigated the political and cultural circulation of texts, people, practices and ideas over these three decades, taking the Italian context as the starting point for a transnational history.
Dr Topini’s research interests also extend to queer history, with particular attention to transnational lesbian movements. She has developed and coordinated public and community engagement projects with major cultural and archival institutions in Geneva and works regularly with grassroots organizations to preserve and promote the heritage of local feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements.
Selected publications
Topini, Carolina. 2026 (forth.). "“Population Control, No! Women Decide!”. Feminist Encounters, North-South Circulations and Reproductive Rights Struggles, 1970s-80s”, in From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945 (eds. ed. Maud Bracke, Raúl Necochea López, and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn), University of California Press.
Topini, Carolina. 2024. Resisting population control. Global women’s health activism and contraceptive controversies. Third World Quarterly, December 2024, 1–19.
Topini, Carolina, Debergh, Marlyse. 2023. Rosangela Gramoni, militante féministe genevoise pour la santé des femmes depuis cinquante ans. "Il faut croire que la lutte féministe, ça conserve!". Nouvelles Questions Féministes (NQF), Vol. 42/2: 97-110.
Topini, Carolina, Sentis, Isabelle. ʻNotre histoire compteʼ. Transmettre l’histoire des mouvements féministes et lesbiens à Genève. GLAD! Revue sur le langage, le genre, les sexualités, special issue on Archives, genre,
sexualités, discours, 11 | 2021.
Topini, Carolina. 2021. Les archives du genre. Déjouer l'effacement, in Vincent Debaene, Éléonore Devevey, Nathalie Piégay (dir.), Archiver / créer, Genève, Droz, 167-191.
Topini, Carolina. 2020. Femminismo e decolonialità, in Rachele Borghi, Decolonialità e privilegio. Pratiche femministe e critica al sistema-mondo, Milano, Meltemi Editore, collana Culture Radicali, pp. 117-137. Trad. «Féminisme et décolonialité», in Rachele Borghi, Décolonialité & Privilège. Devenir complice, éd. Daronnes, Paris, 2021: 35-260.
Astier, Lorraine, Matras, Mathilde. Topini, Carolina. 2019. Étude exploratoire des archives des luttes LGBTIQ à Genève (années 1970-2000). État des lieux et proposition de solutions. Policy Research Report, Association Lestime, sous mandat de la Ville de Genève. pp. 86.