Spencer M. Di Scala was born on the lower East side of Manhattan and grew up there and in Queens, New York. He received his B.A. from Queens College (CUNY), New York’s public university. His M.A. and Ph.D. degrees are from Columbia University, where he studied under Shepard Clough, A. William Salomone, Peter Gay, Garrett Mattingly, and Eric Goldman. As a graduate student he was awarded two Fulbright grants to Milan, Italy to do research on his dissertation, which later became his first book; and as a professor he won a Fulbright fellowship to Rome to research his second book. Di Scala started teaching at the University of Kentucky and came to UMass Boston in 1970. He has been a full professor since 1986, and in 1997 the university named him research professor.

His teaching and writing has centered on the history of Italy and Europe, with a particular focus on modern Italian Socialism, from which he has branched out into the general history of Italy and modern Europe, to political thought, and to Italian-American subjects. He has taught a gamut of courses from Western Civilization to Italian and European history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to graduate courses on a variety of specialized topics. He introduced online courses to the history department, teaches regularly online, and won the 2007 University Continuing Education Association’s Award for Excellence in Teaching; in 2006 he won the same association’s regional award for innovation in teaching.