Celeste Costantino

Celeste Costantino holds a degree in Philosophy and specialized in Cultural Mediation through a postgraduate Master’s degree at Roma Tre University. She later pursued further specialization in Didactic, Psychological, and Anthropological Methodologies at the Università Dante Alighieri in Reggio Calabria. She served as Cultural Mediation Advisor to the Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini.

Elected to the Chamber of Deputies during the XVII Legislature, in 2013 she was appointed to the VII Commission – Culture, Science, and Education, where she focused on Cultural Heritage, Permanent Theatres, Cinema, and Copyright. The following year, she became a member of the First Commission – Constitutional Affairs. Until December 22, 2015, she was Secretary of the Italian Delegation to the Council of Europe. In the same year, she joined the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Mafia and other criminal organizations, including foreign ones.

During her term, she was the first to request and secure the Italian Parliament’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention against violence against women. She was also the first signatory of the bill proposing the introduction of affective education in schools, which inspired the campaign Un’ora d’amore, signed by over 44,000 people.

She is the author of the documentary Rita Pisano (2022) for Rai Storia. She wrote the script for the first graphic novel addressing femicide, Roberta Lanzino. Ragazza, published by Round Robin Editrice in 2012 and illustrated by Marina Comandini. Some panels from the graphic novel were exhibited in 2015 at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere.

She edited the first and second editions of the dossier Sdisonorate – Le mafie uccidono le donne, created by the anti-mafia association daSud, of which she is a founding member. In 2019, she curated the film series Altre visioni, promoted by daSud in collaboration with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia at the Accademia Popolare dell’Antimafia e dei Diritti in Rome.

She has served as Coordinator of the Gender Equality Observatory at the Ministry of Culture and currently works as a consultant on cultural policy and gender issues.