Who am I?

I am currently a Professor at the Department of Business Economics, Health and Social Care of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Italian Switzerland (SUPSI), associate researcher at the Department of Sociology and Nuffield College of the University of Oxford, research fellow of the Swiss School of Public Health and Milan Center for Neurosciences (NEUROMI).

I like to define myself as a social scientist with training in behavioral and applied economics and a focus of research on gender inequalities, demography, and development.

From a thematic standpoint, my research interests can be summarised as follows:

  1. The impacts of digital technologies on demographic and socioeconomic outcomes, including health, well-being, and female empowerment.
  2. The impacts of unexpected, unforeseen or exogenous events on demographic and behavioural attitudes.
  3. The impacts of individual-level demographic discontinuities on behavioural attitudes.
  4. How interpersonal trust and trust in science evolve within societies and unfold during unexpected events.

From a methodological standpoint, I am interested in understanding how behavioral and demographic research can enrich each other while using:

  1. Experimental, Behavioral, and Neuro-economic research designs.
  2. Artificial intelligence algorithms.
  3. Wearable devices to gather unconventional or underexplored data.
  4. Big data and computational social science methodologies.

My overarching research aim is to dig deeper into the link between individual-level socioeconomic and demographic behavior and socioeconomic and health outcomes.

Besides my research activity, I currently teach "unusual data analysis" at the Master of Science in Business Administration at SUPSI; I am one of the three directors of the Certificate of Advanced Studies in "Integral Economics" held by the University of Fribourg and SUPSI.

I hold a Ph.D. (2016) in Economics from the Catholic University of Milan, an MSc (2011) in Political Economy and International Institutions, and a BA (2009) in International Cooperation and Development from the University of Pavia.

On top of my academic activity, in my life, I take care of my husband, Leonardo, and my two children. I am member of the scientific committee of the  international movement "The Economy of Francesco" and of the "School of Civil Economy".