Giampietro ‘Nico’ Berti (Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza, Italy, 1943) joined the anarchist movement at a young age, coming into contact with Amedeo Bertolo and the Milanese group Gioventù Libertaria [Libertarian Youth] in the early 1960s. Shortly after, in 1965, he contributed to the birth of the Federated Anarchist Youth Groups (GGAF) which became the Federated Anarchist Groups (GAF) in 1970. In 1969 he co-founded with Elis Fraccaro the Nestor Makhno group in Venice-Marghera, also affiliated to the GAF.
In 1971 he co-founded the monthly magazine A/Rivista Anarchica, with Amedeo Bertolo, Rossella Di Leo, Luciano Lanza, Fausta Bizzozzero, Roberto Ambrosoli and Paolo Finzi, and in 1976 he was among the promoters of the Centro Studi Libertari/Giuseppe Pinelli Archive (CSL) in Milan, participating in all of its main initiatives and contributing in particular to the international conferences organised over the decades in Venice, from the conference of Bakuninian Studies in 1976 to the conference on ‘Authoritarian tendencies and libertarian tensions in contemporary societies’ organised as part of Venice 1984. In the editorial field, he collaborated with the international quarterly Interrogations (1974–1979) and served as a member of the editorial team of the journal Volontà from 1980 to its closure in 1996. Subsequently he was part of the editorial committee of the periodical Libertaria. He also collaborated with the anarchist publisher Antistato (1975–1985), and then since 1986 with elèuthera. He was a professor of contemporary history at the University of Padua (and between 1998 and 2002 also at the University of Trieste), where he taught on the history of political parties and ideologies of the twentieth century. His research interests revolve around the history of ideas between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With respect to anarchism, his main publications (in Italian) include Francesco Saverio Merlino: From Socialist Anarchism to Liberal Socialism, 1856–1930 (1993); An Exorbitant Idea of Freedom: Introduction to Anarchist Thought (1994); Anarchist Thinking: From the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century (1998); Errico Malatesta and the Italian and International Anarchist Movement 1872–1932 (2003); and Freedom without Revolution: Anarchism between the Defeat of Communism and the Victory of Capitalism (2012). His latest book, Against History: Fifty Years of Anarchism in Italy (2016), is devoted to the history of the Federated Anarchist Groups (GAF) and to the many cultural and editorial initiatives carried out over the decades. He was also the national coordinator of the Biographical Dictionary of Italian Anarchists (2003–2004).