Giordana Merlo is Associate Professor of History of Pedagogy and Education (PAED-01/B) at the University of Padua. Her research and teaching focus on the history of pedagogy, with particular attention to the evolution of educational models, school institutions, and the culture of childhood.She graduated with honours in Pedagogy and obtained a PhD in Pedagogy and Educational Sciences at the University of Padua. After serving as a teaching assistant and tutor for teacher training in the Primary Education degree course, and as lecturer at the University of Trieste, she became a university researcher in 2004. Following her national scientific qualification (2018), she has been Associate Professor since 2022.Her research activity is mainly developed in three areas: the history of childhood education, the history of schooling, and the history of pedagogical theories and educational institutions. Her studies explore the construction of childhood as a historical and social category, the representations of education in utopian and dystopian literature, and the evolution of school practices and educational materials. She has also investigated the thought of authors such as Aristide Gabelli, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Vera Schmidt, and Siegfried Bernfeld, focusing on the preservation and interpretation of historical-educational heritage and on the role of educational museums as spaces of teacher formation and innovation.She has taken part in numerous national and international research projects, including the PRIN School Memories between Social Perception and Collective Representation (1861–2001) and the Spanish project Historia pública de la educación en España (1970–2020), and collaborates with the research group “Patrimonio histórico-educativo, formación e innovación pedagógica del profesorado” at the Universitat de les Illes Balears.Her teaching covers undergraduate and graduate courses in Motor Sciences, Educational Sciences, Primary Teacher Education, and Pedagogy, as well as postgraduate and doctoral programmes. She is a member of the board of the PhD programme in Pedagogical, Educational and Training Sciences at the University of Padua.She has held several academic and institutional roles, including membership of the Department Board (FISPPA) as researchers’ representative, and chair of the Beato Pellegrino Library Committee and the Humanities Campus Committee. She serves on scientific and editorial boards and is a member of leading national and international scholarly societies, including SIPED, CIRSE, SIPSE, ISCHE, SPES, As.Pe.I., and AIPH.Her main publications include L’istruzione classica nell’Italia postunitaria. Cultura e dirigenza scolastica (Scholé, 2022), Alle origini della favola in Italia (Pensa Multimedia, 2015), and La prima infanzia e la sua educazione tra utopia e scienza (Franco Angeli, 2011). She received the As.Pe.I. Award in 2018 and the SIPED Award in 2023 for the excellence of her scholarly contributions.

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