Francesca Marino

Francesca Marino is an Italian journalist, author and photographer specializing in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the wider Indian subcontinent.
She has worked for decades on issues related to South Asia, geopolitics, human rights, terrorism, minorities and cultural identity. Her early work combined journalism, visual anthropology and anti-racist activism. In the 1990s she collaborated with the “MG Favara” Observatory on Racism of the Third University of Rome, the anti-racist association Nero e non solo, the Laboratory of Visual Anthropology of La Sapienza University of Rome, the cultural association Contemporary – Laboratorio d’Antropologia, and MUSIS, the Museum of Science and Scientific Information of La Sapienza University, contributing to exhibitions, seminars, research projects and publications on racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and cultural identity.
From 1996 to 1999 she was a member of Lettera 22, the independent association of journalists. Since 1995 she has been editor, and later director, of the online magazine Stringer Asia.
She is a regular contributor to Limes – Rivista italiana di geopolitica, where she writes Desh, a column on the Indian subcontinent for Limesonline.it. She also writes regularly for the Swiss weekly Azione. As a journalist and South Asia expert, she has contributed to numerous Italian and international media outlets, including Diario della Settimana, Il Riformista, Geo, Critica Sociale, Il Mattino, RAI News 24, Secolo XIX, Radio Televisione Svizzera Italiana, Sky TG24, L’Unità, Il Messaggero, Il Foglio and L’Espresso. In India, she has written for The Times of India, Firstpost, Open, ANI News, The Quint and the Observer Research Foundation.
She regularly speaks at conferences, lectures and seminars in European and Indian universities, as well as at the European institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg and at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In 2010 she received the Elio Fata – Luigiano d’Oro Journalism Award.
Her books include India in 100 Images (Laterza, 2007), Apocalypse Pakistan with Beniamino Natale (Memori, 2011), Balochistan: Bruised, Battered and Bloodied (Bloomsbury, 2020), and Balakot: The Inside Story (Vitashta, 2025)