Ilaria Macconi Heckner

International fellow

Research interests

History of religion, church history and the history of religious congregations, gender history, history of mentality, history of secularization and transformation processes, interreligious dialogue.

Education and academic experience

Currently, she is working on a book about the history of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Consolata in Kenya. She collaborates on an academic exchange between Tangaza University College in Nairobi and the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII in Bologna on interreligious dialogue. She is the editor of the volume  Variations and Encounters of Religious Experiences in East Africa: History, Actors and Challenges.

Since 2017, in Nairobi, she teaches some university courses (in English) on historical methodology and the use of religious sources.

Between 2002 and 2011, she taught courses in German at the University of Fribourg on various topics of Italian and Swiss history in the contemporary age, on European historiography, on historical methodology in general, and on oral history in particular.

Outside the university context, besides participating in various conferences, she was a foreign correspondent for a Swiss newspaper and collaborated with the Centro di Studi Dehoniani in the initial phase of a project aimed at the electronic publication of the correspondence of P. Léon Dehon.

On behalf of the Swiss Society of History, she organized the Third Swiss Congress of Historical Sciences (Fribourg, 7–9 February 2013).

She worked as a research assistant for the chair of Social Communications and for that of Contemporary History at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). She was then assigned to teach some history courses in German at the same university.

In 2010, she defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) entitled Crisi della parrocchia e erosione del tradizionale stile di vita dei cattolici in Italia e in Svizzera negli anni Cinquanta. I casi campione nella diocesi di Losanna, Ginevra e Friburgo, nella diocesi di Lugano e in quella di Porto-Santa Rufina (supervisor: Prof. Urs Altermatt).

She earned a degree in Political Science (historical-political track) at La Sapienza University of Rome.

Featured publications

Monographs

I. Macconi, Crisi della parrocchia ed erosione del tradizionale stile di vita dei cattolici negli anni Cinquanta, Locarno, Dadò, 2017.

C. Bosshart-Pfluger, I. Macconi Heckner, The Ursulines of Fribourg and the Sacred Heart Sisters of Rome stance on the challenges of the modern world in the 1950s and 1960s. Comparative view on their daily life and vocations on the threshold of the Second Vatican Council [manuscript].

Articles

I. Macconi, Cristiano-sociali: il precedente diverso (1939-1948), «Il Bianco e il Rosso» 46-47 (1993), pp. 51-54.

I. Macconi, Tempo libero: i luoghi della sociabilità. La parrocchia negli anni Cinquanta, «Storia in Lombardia» 1-2 (1995), pp. 411-430.

I. Macconi, Crisi della parrocchia in Italia negli anni Cinquanta, «Studium» 4 (1996), pp. 563-581.

L. Bosshart, I. Macconi Heckner, Media Entertainment, «Communication Research Trends» 18 (1998), pp. 3-38.

I. Macconi, La funzione di coesione dei mass-media in Svizzera: dal punto di vista dei giornalisti, «Medienwissenschaft Schweiz», 2 (1999), pp. 44-46.

I. Macconi, Erosione del tradizionale stile di vita dei cattolici in Italia e in Svizzera negli anni 1950, «RSSRC» 96 (2002), pp. 41-51.

I. Macconi, La situation religieuse dans le diocèse de Lugano après 1945: transformation et crise, «RSSRC» 105 (2011), pp. 297-306.

I. Macconi, La «politicizzazione» della vita religiosa in Italia nel secondo dopoguerra, «RSSRC» 106 (2012), pp. 375-391.

C. Bosshart-Pfluger, I. Macconi Heckner, Dritte Schweizerische Geschichtstage. Freiburg 7.-9. Februar 2013 «global-local», «SZRKG» 107 (2013), pp. 515-517.

C. Bosshart-Pfluger, I. Macconi Heckner, Tra crisi e «aggiornamento»: le Orsoline di Anne de Xainctonge e le Suore del Sacro Cuore di Gesù nel lungo secondo dopoguerra. Zwischen Krise und «aggiornamento»: Die Ursulinen von Anne de Xainctonge und die Sacré-Cœur Schwestern in der langen Nachkriegszeit, «SZRKG» 109 (2015), pp. 345-366.

Volumes edited

L. Bosshart, I. Macconi Heckner et al. (eds), Medienpolitik vs. Medienpraxis. Journalistisches Dilemma in einem mehrsprachigen Land, Report for the Federal Office of Communications, December 1997 [manuscript].

Chapters in books

Eglise et société: la “sécularisation dans le diocèse de Porto-Santa Rufina dans les années 1950, in Le cardinal Tisserant (1884-1972). Une grande figure française, Actes du Colloque international organisé à Toulouse le 22 et 23 novembre 2002, Toulouse, Groupe de recherche en histoire immédiate, 2003, pp. 147-158.

Reviews

​L. Planzi, Luigi Sturzo e il Cantone Ticino. La terra che gli diede voce sfidando il fascismo (1929-1947), Locarno, Armando Dadò Editore, 2011, pp. 417, in «RSSRC» 105 (2011), pp. 554-556.

U. Altermatt, Cattolicesimo e mondo moderno, Locarno, Dadò, 1996, in «Cristianesimo nella storia» 22 (2002), pp. 542-554.