Raised between Texas and northern Italy, Bachelor degree in Sociology at the University of Bologna, MA in Islamic Studies at Trinity Saint David University of Wales and a further specialization in Terrorism and Counter-terrorism at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism-ICT. His areas of expertise are political and religious extremism and the street gang phenomenon.
He currently works as a senior analyst for the Italian Team for Security, Terroristic Issues and Managing Emergencies-Itstime in Milan’s Catholic University and conducts analysis and articles for InsideOver and Il Giornale online. Giacalone is the country-coordinator for the Globsec European project “From criminals to terrorists and back”, with the objective of analyzing the crime-terror nexus among jihadist foreign fighters. He is also a member of the Kedisa-Center for International Strategic Analysis based in Athens, Greece. From 2014 to 2016 he was an associate researcher for Istituto Studi Politica Internazionale-Ispi’s “Observatory on Terrorism”.
He has also trained security managers and law enforcement on security-related issues.
