Isotta Ricci Bitti (former staff)
Isotta Ricci Bitti (Italy) worked as an analyst for ESI from April 2015 to November 2018, having first completed an ESI junior fellowship. She deals with migration and asylum policies across the EU – in particular in Italy, Greece and the Netherlands – and in Turkey, and with the international human rights architecture in Europe, primarily the Council of Europe. Isotta holds a bachelor's degree in International and Diplomatic Relations from the University of Bologna (Forlì campus) in Italy. During the final year of her bachelor's degree, she studied at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris where she also wrote her thesis on the democratization process in Romania. Isotta also holds a master's degree in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (MIREES) which she obtained from the University of Bologna. In 2010/11 she lived in Sarajevo where she conducted research on documentary filmmaking and new social movements. Her resulting thesis "(Anti-)politics on screen: activist documentary filmmaking in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 2010" won a prize for best thesis defended that year. While in Sarajevo, Isotta also worked as director assistant for the Human Rights Film Festival "Pravo ljudski". Isotta then raised funds and worked as a journalist for the independent online platform and magazine "Kosovo 2.0" in Pristina. In 2012 she moved to Berlin where she first worked as a content manager for Ikono TV, a media platform displaying and broadcasting visual arts, and then in different positions in the field of communication and project management. For ESI, Isotta has conducted field research in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. She speaks Italian, French, German and some Bosnian.