Michele Pifferi

Michele Pifferi is Professor of Legal History at the University of Ferrara, Law Department and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.

He has been visiting researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main (2002), Emil Noël Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International & Regional Economic Law and Justice, NYU (2009); Robbins Fellow at Berkeley UC - School of Law (2012); Academic visitor and then Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Oxford Centre for Criminology (2014 and 2016; 2023/24); Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg (2015-2017) and Berlin (2021). He is member of the Editorial Board of the series Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtsgeschehen – Italien (LIT Verlag), of Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno and of Rivista di storia del diritto italiano. He is also member of the Advisory Board of the Franz-von-Liszt-Institut für Internationales Strafrecht – Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

His research interests focus on history of migration law and border control, history of criminology and criminal law. He is currently the PI of the national research projects (PRIN 2022) on "Casuistry" and rule-based approach in criminal law. Historical perspectives, current developments. 

His recent publications include: "The Historical Origins and Evolution of Rehabilitative Punishment", Crime and Justice. A Review of Research, 53 (2024), edited by Michael Tonry (ahead of print); From Casuistry to the General Part: The Conception of Criminal Responsibility from the ius commune to the Penal Codes (12th–19th Centuries)", in The Routledge International Handbook of Criminal Responsibility, Edited By Thomas Crofts, Louise Kennefick, Arlie Loughnan (Routledge 2025) 138-152; "Exceptionality and common features of migration law in the age of mass migration", in L. Nuzzo, M. Pifferi, G. Speciale, C. Vano (eds.), Legal Responses to Mass Migration: From the Nineteenth Century to World War II (Routledge-Giappichelli, 2024) 337-357; "Dalla casistica alle regole: la normativizzazione della responsabilità penale tra medioevo ed età moderna", Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, 52 (2023), 401-423;  The Limits of Criminological Positivism. The Movement for Criminal Law Reform in the West, 1870-1940 (editor, Routledge, 2022); Reinventing Punishment. A Comparative History of Criminology and Penology in the 19th and 20th Century (OUP, 2016); Punishment and social control in historical perspective, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (2022); “Criminology and the rise of authoritarian criminal law (1930s–1940s)”, in Stephen Skinner (ed.), Ideology and Criminal Law. Fascist, National Socialist and Authoritarian Regimes (Hart, 2019) 105–24; "The Theory of Social Defence and the Italian Positive School of Criminal Law", Glossae. European Journal of Legal History, 17 (2020), pp. 22-46.