2026
Research
My research agenda focuses on the political consequences of social stratification. It rests on four pillars:
- how socio-economic inequalities structure political preferences and participation, and how these dispositions are transmitted from parents to children over the life course;
- how personal networks and social ties, both given and chosen, shape status perceptions and political behaviour;
- how macro-level political and economic conditions, and their variation across countries, shape these processes over time;
- how innovative quantitative approaches can shed new light on long-standing problems in longitudinal and life course research.
The motivation is the persistence of social and economic inequality in contemporary democracies, and the question of how structural disadvantage, once established, turns into lasting differences in political orientations. I combine classical sociological theory with longitudinal, multilevel, social network, and statistical learning methods.
The aim is to understand why democratic institutions struggle to remain inclusive under conditions of inequality, and what might be done to widen participation.
Preprints
2026
Drawing the Line: Status by Association across 28 Societies
Preprint, link forthcoming
with Leo Azzollini and Stefani Scherer
Publications
2026
Healthcare Provision and Attitudes Towards Redistribution: A Regional Analysis Across Europe
Journal of European Public Policy
with Leo Azzollini and Franco Bonomi Bezzo · 33(4), 1119–1147
2026
Measuring Populism in Europe: Comparison and Validation in the European Social Survey
Quality & Quantity
with Giorgio Dolci · 60, 837–855 · authors contributed equally
2025
Social Mobility, Self Selection, and the Persistence of Class Inequality in Electoral Participation
The British Journal of Sociology
with Nan Dirk de Graaf and Geoffrey Evans · 76(5), 1040–1051
2025
Where I Stand and What I Stand For: Subjective Status, Class, and Redistribution
Social Science Research
with Leo Azzollini · 130, 103210
Covered in The Conversation
2025
Class, Subjective Status, and Turnout in Europe
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility
97, 101039
2025
Intergenerational Social Class Mobility and Support for Redistributive Policies in Italy, 2003–2024
Stato & Mercato
45(3), 303–344
2025
Frontiers in Sociology
with Leo Azzollini · 10, 1617413
2024
Populist Attitudes, Subjective Social Status, and Resentment in Italy
Social Indicators Research
with Stefani Scherer · 173(3), 589–606
Work in progress
Under review
- The Reproduction of Political Inequality: Parents Account for Class Differences in Turnout
- How Parties Reshaped Class Participation: The Central Role of Parental Abstention
Working papers
- Broken Promises of Mobility? A Counterfactual Decomposition of Structural Change and Political Disengagement with Leo Azzollini, Stefani Scherer and Geoffrey Evans
- Who Misreports Social Origins? Measurement Bias in Retrospective Class and Education Data
- The Rising Importance of Social Origin: A Comparative Analysis of Political Dissatisfaction with Fabian Kratz
- The Political Relevance of Subjective Class in Europe, 1987–2019 with Mathilde M. van Ditmars and Geoffrey Evans
- Life Course Resource Trajectory Model for Political Engagement with Leo Azzollini and Clara Weißenfels
- The Value of Work Across Generations and Gender: How Grandparents Matter in Post-Industrial Societies with Franco Bonomi Bezzo and Anne-Marie Jeannet
- Housing Trajectories and the Lasting Echo of Social Origin on Political Engagement with Enrico Benassi
- The Intergenerational Continuity of the Educational Divide in Young Europeans’ Political Attitudes and EU Support with Mathilde M. van Ditmars
- Political Inequality in Democratic Engagement: Can Public Spending on Education Close the Gap?
Book chapters
- Social Class and Voting, with Mathilde M. van Ditmars and Macarena Ares. In P. Vasilopoulos, A. Sanders and R. Dassonneville (eds.), Voting Behaviour, Oxford University Press. Under contract, expected 2027