Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco (Alessandria, 1983) is an associte professor of cultural anthropology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Hearth of Milan, previously having served at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, and is an honorary fellow at the Department of Anthropology of Durham University and Honorary Professor at the Durban University of Technology. His research focuses on local development, with particular attention to entrepreneurship and sustainable development and the construction of local know-how in Italy and Eastern Africa. He has published numerous works in Italy and internationally, some of which are 'The End of the City of Gold? Industrial and Economic Crisis in an Italian Jewellery Town' (Cambridge Scholars, 2013) and 'Food Festivals and Local Development in Italy: A Viewpoint from Economic Anthropology' (Palgrave, 2020), "Rural Affective Economies" (Palgrave, 2025).