Comune and Chiesa: Unlocking Online Italian Town and Church Records is a four-week online course delivered in partnership by the Society of Australian Genealogists and Family History Academy, and taught by specialist researcher Barbara Bombaci, CG®. It is designed for family historians who are ready to move beyond what migration records can tell them and work directly in the sources their ancestors left behind.

Italian civil and church records can be extraordinarily rich, capturing multiple generations of family information in a single document, yet they vary considerably by region, period, and record type, and navigating what exists, where it is held, and how to use it requires both knowledge and strategy. This course addresses that directly, guiding participants through records spanning three distinct historical periods and two parallel record-keeping systems, civil and ecclesiastical, with a focus on building transferable skills rather than one-off finds.

Barbara Bombaci brings specialist knowledge of Italian records, repositories, and research strategy to every session. Participants leave not just with new techniques but with a genuine understanding of the Italian archival landscape — and the confidence to keep researching long after the course ends.