Gianluca Iazzolino is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of International Department, and he is based at the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa (FLCA). He is currently working on the ESRC project “A Tale of Two Green Valleys”, which focuses on Data-driven agro-innovation in California’s Central Valley and Kenya’s Rift Valley

His main research interests are digital finance, informal economy, migration and ICTs. His study focuses on the interplay of technology and power. He is particularly interested in the financial infrastructure of mobility, in how information and value circulate and in the role of digital platforms in the Global South in reshaping processes of inclusion and exclusion and instigating new forms of organisation and practices of contestation.

Gianluca had done extensive fieldwork in Kenya, Uganda, Somaliland and has worked for NGOs in Senegal, Burkina Faso and Niger. He has consulted on mobile money and digital financial inclusion for, among others, UN capital Development Fund (UNCDF), FSD Kenya, FAO Somalia and the Rift Valley Institute. He holds a PhD from the Centre of African Studies (CAS), University of Edinburgh, where he did a thesis on Somali transnational networks in Kenya, Uganda and Somaliland. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Centre for Socio-legal Studies, University of Oxford, and a fellow of the Institute of Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI), University of California Irvine. Prior to his PhD, he has worked as a freelance journalist in Africa, Central and South America, the Middle East, Russia and India.