Antonio Nicaso


Antonio Nicaso is an Italian author, university professor, researcher, speaker and consultant to governments and law-enforcement agencies originally from Caulonia, Calabria, Italy, now based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is an expert on the Calabrian mafia. Nicaso lives and works in North America. He teaches courses on "Social History of Organized Crime in Canada" and "Mafia Culture and the Power of Symbols, Rituals and Myth" at Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario. He also teaches at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario and the Italian School of Middlebury College in Oakland, California in the United States and is the co-director of the Research in Forensic Semiotics Unit at Victoria College.
Nicaso has published more than 30 books. His book Global Mafia, published in 1995, concerned international criminal partnerships. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security, at York University ; on the International Advisory Council of the Italian Institute of Strategic Studies "Niccolò Machiavelli" in Rome, Italy, and on the Expert Advisory Committee on Bullying, Intimidation and Gang Violence in Montreal. He is also president of Centro Scuola e Cultura, a program offering Italian courses and courses abroad in Italy.

Career

Nicaso initially began his career as a print and television journalist, writing about local Italian phenomena like the 'Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra and the Camorra. He later went on to expand his area of expertise to include international criminal organisations and has since published widely in English and Italian on the subject. With over 30 published works, many of which have been translated into other languages, Nicaso can be considered a leading authority on various aspects of international criminal organisations. One of his latest publications include Made men: Mafia Culture and the Power of Symbols, Rituals, and Myth, which attempts to deconstruct the myth propagated by cinema, television and the media of mafiosi as men of honour and Dire e non dire, which analyses the use of language, behavioural norms and rules associated with those involved in organised crime. Another of his books, Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War was adapted into a television series called Bad Blood, featuring Anthony LaPaglia as Vito Rizzuto, Paul Sorvino as Nicolo Rizzuto and Kim Coates as Declan Gardiner, which debuted in fall 2017, now available on Netflix worldwide.

Selected publications

French

Manuela Bertone, Antonio Nicaso, Donato Santeramo, Rhétorique et représentations de la culture mafieuse. Images, rituels, mythes et symboles, « Cahiers de Narratologie », 36 / 2019. http://journals.openedition.org/narratologie/

English