Unit director(s): Gauthier Jacques-Antoine
Teachers
| Name | Position(s) |
| Berchtold André | Professeur associé |
| Bernardi Laura | Professeure ordinaire |
| Bühlmann Felix | Professeur associé |
| Gauthier Jacques-Antoine | Maître d'enseignement et de recherche |
| Gianettoni Lavinia | Maître d'enseignement et de recherche |
| Grätz Michael | Maître assistant Ambizione FNS |
| Joye Dominique | Professeur honoraire |
| Knüsel René | Professeur honoraire |
| Le Goff Jean-Marie | Maître d'enseignement et de recherche |
| Marcellini Anne | Professeure associée |
| Morselli Davide | Maître d'enseignement et de recherche |
| Oesch Daniel | Professeur associé |
| Roberts Caroline | Maître d'enseignement et de recherche |
| Spini Dario | Professeur ordinaire |
| Steinmetz Stephanie | Professeure associée |
| Vandecasteele Leen | Professeure associée |
Assistants
| Name | Position(s) |
| Ajdacic Lena | Doctorante FNS |
| Alkoç Nursel | Assistante diplômée |
| Alves Barbeiro Ana Isabel | Doctorante |
| Amaro Galhano Laura | Doctorante |
| Asensio Manjon Marc | Assistant diplômé |
| Bagnéken Claude Olivier | Doctorant |
| Beramendi Maite Regina | Chercheuse FNS senior |
| Bian Fei | Doctorante FNS |
| Blondé Jérôme | Chercheur FNS senior |
| Bornatici Christina | Doctorante |
| Brandalesi Vanessa | Doctorante |
| Canzio Leandro Ivan | Doctorant FNS |
| Cheng Mengling | Doctorante FNS |
| Chevillard Julien | Doctorant |
| Chopard-Dit-Jean Aurélie | Assistante diplômée |
| Correa Kaback O Jean Pascal | Doctorant |
| Delgado Villanueva Cecilia | Assistante diplômée |
| Diatta Ibrahima Dina | Assistant diplômé |
| Dini Fatemeh | Doctorante |
| Emery Kevin | Doctorant FNS |
| Gaiaschi Camilla | Boursière |
| Girardin Nadia | Doctorante |
| Gross Dinah | Chercheuse FNS senior |
| Insarauto Valeria | Première assistante |
| Jan Nicole | Doctorante |
| Jayakody Jayakody Arachchilage Sumedha | Doctorant |
| Köster Fiona | Doctorante FNS |
| Li Yang | Chercheur FNS senior |
| Ménard Benjamin | Assistant diplômé |
| Moawad Jad | Assistant diplômé |
| Moreau Shmatenko Léa | Doctorante |
| Morel Sandrine | Assistante diplômée |
| Pinon Mélanie | Doctorante |
| Reveilhac Maud | Assistante diplômée |
| Sabot Cléolia | Assistante diplômée |
| Sanchez Mira Nuria | Première assistante |
| Scheidegger Justine | Doctorante FNS |
| Schmutz Rita | Assistante diplômée |
| Stavenschi Cristina | Doctorante |
| Tilman Alexandra | Chercheuse FNS senior |
| Vigna Nathalie | Assistante diplômée |
| Weil Armelle | Doctorante |
Staff
| Name | Position(s) |
| Beetschen Marion | Chargée de recherche |
| Chappuis Anne-Sophie | Secrétaire d'unité |
| Lindholm Annika | Chargée de recherche |
| Piguet Steven | Concepteur - développeur |
| Vaccaro Giannina | Chargée de recherche |
Membres associés
| Nom | Fonction(s) |
| Aeby Gaëlle | Chargée de cours, UNIFR / collaboratrice de recherche, UNIGE |
| Alves Barbeiro Ana | Assistante diplômée |
| Bolano Danilo | Senior researcher, NCCR LIVES |
| Cavalli Stefano | Maître assistant, Centre Interfacultaire de Gérontologie, UNIGE |
| Clémence Alain | Professeur associé |
| Dasoki Nora | Chargée de recherche, FORS |
| Falcon Julie | Collaboratrice scientifique externe |
| Fasel Hunziker Rachel | Coordinatrice de recherche, LIVES |
| Fassa Recrosio Farinaz | Professeure assistante |
| Giudici Francesco | Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University in the city of New York |
| Hanappi Doris | Chercheuse Senior SNF |
| Hummel Cornelia | Maître d'enseignement et de recherche, Département de sociologie, UNIGE |
| Korber Maïlys | Collaboratrice scientifique externe |
| Kradolfer Morales Sabine | Chargée de cours |
| Labouvie-Vief Gisela | Professeure, Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation, UNIGE |
| Lefeuvre Nicky | Professeure, Faculté des sciences sociales et politiques |
| Leresche Jean-Philippe | Directeur, Observatoire, Science, Politique, Société |
| Levy René | Professeur honoraire |
| Lutz Georg | Chef de section de recherche, FORS |
| Maggiori Christian | Chercheur FNS senior 1ère année |
| Marquis Lionel | Maître d'enseignement et de recherche, Institut d'études politiques et internationales |
| Mc Kenzie Tsering | Doctorante FNS |
| Oris Michel | Professeur ordinaire, Département d'histoire économique, UNIGE |
| Passy Florence | Professeure associée, Institut d'études politiques et internationales |
| Rauschenbach Mina | Post-doctoral researcher, Leuven institute for criminology (LINC) |
| Roch Pierre-Alain | Public Policy Evaluator, Cour des comptes de Genève |
| Roux Patricia | Professeure associée |
| Ryser Valérie-Anne | Cheffe de projet de recherche, FORS |
| Staerklé Christian | Professeur associée |
| Vacchiano Mattia | Post-doc Researcher, NCCR LIVES |
| Valarino Isabel | Chargée de missions, Bureau de l'égalité |
| Vandenplas Caroline | Post-Doctorante, KU Leuven, Belgique |
| Wernli Boris | Chef de section de recherche, FORS |
| Widmer Eric | Professeur ordinaire, Département de sociologie, UNIGE |
Secrétariat
| Nom | Adresse |
| Chappuis Anne-Sophie | Bâtiment Géopolis, bureau 5105 |
Teachers
André Berchtold
André Berchtold is Associate Professor in Statistics in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne. He teaches courses on quantitative methodology and statistics, as well as on substance use, for the BA and MA programs in social sciences. He has a PhD in economic and social sciences, with a specialization in econometrics and statistics, from the University of Geneva. He is also member of the National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES: Overcoming vulnerability, life course perspectives.
Research interests André Berchtold is an expert in statistics applied to the social sciences, and he is developing new methods for the treatment of missing data and for the modeling of longitudinal data using Markovian models. He also has special interest in data collection using life history calendars. In addition to theoretical developments, he also published many articles in the field of health, especially regarding adolescent health and substance use.
Laura Bernardi
Laura Bernardi is Full Professor of sociology and demography of the life course at the Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (LINES) of the University of Lausanne. She is member of the Swiss National Research Council and of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is also co-Editor in Chief of the journal Advances in Life Course Research (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/advances-in-life-course-research) and President of the Scientific Council of the French Institut national d’études démographiques (INED). She teaches on migration, family and social policies, and life course theory. Before arriving to Lausanne, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, at the Brown University and at the University of Rome.
Laura Bernardi has extensively worked on fertility and family diversity in a life course perspective. She has directed and been involved in several projects on fertility and family, nationally and internationally, studying reproductive choices, intergenerational relationships, family norms, family structures and their consequences on wellbeing and vulnerability.
Felix Bühlmann
Felix Bühlmann studied sociology and political sciences at the University of Geneva, the Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Lausanne. After his PhD at the University of Lausanne (2008), he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Manchester and headed the Swiss social report at FORS. He has been assistant professor (2011) and then associate professor (2017) at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne.
Felix Bühlmann is particularly interested in the sociology of the life course and in economic sociology. His research is about occupational careers, careers of vulnerability and about Swiss and international elites. He has published in the British Journal of Sociology, the European Sociological Review, Sociology and Economy and Society.
Jacques-Antoine Gauthier
Jacques-Antoine Gauthier is sociologist and a senior lecturer at the university of Lausanne (Unil). He teaches an introduction to social sciences research at the bachelor degree and a quantitative approach to the life course perspective at the master degree. Before working at Unil he was a scientific collaborator successively at the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and at Addiction suisse. He was also a Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh from 2017 to 2018.
Research interests His research focuses on the ways in which life trajectories of women and men are shaped, in particular when experiencing transitions such as from school to work, to parentality or to retirement. He aims at uncovering the processes by which social institutions such as school, the family or the labor market anticipate and reproduce the systems of roles and values that form the frame for specific gender relationships. To do so, he is follwing a life course perspective that shows that individual trajectories are multidimensional, strongly interdependent and sensitive to the timing of events as well as to the context in which they take place.
Lavinia Gianettoni
Lavinia Gianettoni is a social psychologist. Her research focuses on gender inequalities and their intertwining with other hierarchical social relationships (class, sexuality, nationality, religion, etc.). In her recent research, she has more precisely analysed how the gender, institutional and ideological system influences the career aspirations of young people at the end of their schooling. She is currently conducting longitudinal research to assess how the experience of sexist or homophobic discrimination impacts vocational training trajectories and the risks of disruption or drop-out that can result from it.
Michael Grätz
Michael Grätz joined LINES at UNIL with an Ambizione grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. In addition, he is a researcher at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University. Before, he worked at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and at Bielefeld University. He received his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in 2015.
His research aims at understanding the intergenerational transmission of advantage. For this purpose, he conducts both descriptive studies estimating differences in social mobility across countries, over time, and between groups within societies as well as causal studies that identify the effects of institutions on social mobility. A particular emphasis of his work is on socioeconomic differences in the impact of demographic factors, such as parental separation, and differences between siblings on children. Furthermore, his research explores which mechanisms underlie the intergenerational transmission of advantage, in particular the contribution of parenting to this process.
Personal web page
René Knüsel
René Knüsel has been an ordinary professor of sociology of social policies and social problems since 2004. After training in political science at the University of Lausanne, he taught, among other things, social policies at the University of Fribourg; he has collaborated with various health and social schools in French-speaking Switzerland. Among the approaches it has relied on is intervention research.
Her research focuses on a variety of social issues, including the issue of child abuse, career end-of-career issues, self-help groups. He has also developed research on the social and solidarity economy. His work also focuses on social and political minorities.
Jean-Marie Le Goff
Anne Marcellini
Anne Marcellini is Associate Professor in Sociology of Sport at the Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (LINES) of the University of Lausanne. She is in charge of the Master Degree in "Adapted Physical Activities and Health" of the Institute of Sport Sciences. She published Body, Sport, Handicaps. The handisport movement in the 21st century. Sociological readings (Téraèdre, 2014), and Disability, Recognition and "Community living". Diversity of practices and the benefits (Alter Review, European Journal of Disability Research, special issue, 2, 2018). Before coming to Lausanne, she headed the "Health, Education and Disabling Situations" research center of the University of Montpellier.
Expertise Anne Marcellini has worked since the 1990s on the process of social participation, social inclusion and identity construction of people with disabilities. She is a specialist in qualitative approaches of body practices and social uses of damaged bodies. Her research focuses since 2008 in the field of visual and filmic sociology.
Davide Morselli
Davide Morselli's main research focus is on the psychosocial dynamics of social change and the effects of context on individual world-views and attitudes. He has been studying the psychosocial adaptation to critical life events and has been involved in the implementation of retrospective methods in survey designs to collect biographical data.
Daniel Oesch
Daniel Oesch is associate professor at the Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (LINES) of the University of Lausanne and member of the NCCR LIVES. He teaches classes on social stratification and the life course, the labour market and employment policy. He is the author of two books: Occupational Change in Europe (2013, Oxford University Press) and Redrawing the Class Map (2006, Palgrave Macmillan). Before coming to Lausanne in 2010, he worked at the Universities of Geneva, Pompeu Fabra and Zurich. He has been involved in several large surveys on unemployment in Switzerland, studying the employment trajectories after mass displacement or the role of social contacts for the access to jobs.
Personal web page
Caroline Roberts
Caroline Roberts is Assistant Professor in Survey Methodology. She is currently co-director of LINES, and is also in charge of the MA in Public Opinion and Survey Methodology, for which she teaches courses on survey research methods and questionnaire design. She also teaches quantitative methods for undergraduates. She has a PhD in Social Psychology and a MSc in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to working at UNIL, she worked at the LSE, the UK’s Office for National Statistics, City University London, and Stanford University, as a survey methodologist in the coordinating teams of a number of large-scale social surveys.
Research interests Caroline’s main areas of expertise are in survey methodology and the measurement of social attitudes. Her research interests concern the optimisation of survey data collection protocols, and the measurement and reduction of different types of survey error, with a particular focus on methods to assess nonresponse error, and the antecedents of response errors. Her current research investigates the potential for incorporating smartphone app-based data collection in the context of web surveys of the general population, focusing especially on ways to address public concerns about data privacy and reduce respondent burden.
Dario Spini
Dario Spini is full professor in social psychology and Director of the National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES. His main research interests are interdisciplinary life course research, social contexts and health, and identity processes.
Stephanie Steinmetz
Leen Vandecasteele
Leen Vandecasteele is an Associate Professor at the Life Course and Inequality Centre (LINES) of the University of Lausanne. She is also a member of the National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES. Having obtained her PhD from the University of Leuven, she continued her career as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manchester and visited the University of Harvard as a visiting fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy. She was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and from 2012 to 2017, she worked as a Junior Professor at the University of Tuebingen in Germany.
Research interests Leen Vandecasteele’s main areas of interest are social inequality, poverty and social policy in a life course perspective. She has a particular interest in uncovering processes of cumulative disadvantage at crucial life transitions and determining the individual, social network/family and social policy characteristics that help people cope with economic hardship. Her research examines differences between countries as well as within countries between smaller units of aggregation such as neighbourhoods and trends over time. She works with large-scale quantitative cross-national and longitudinal data sources. Leen Vandecasteele is currently conducting a research project financed by the SNSF on partner effects, in which she analyses the influence of one partner’s socio-economic characteristics on the other partner’s labour market transitions, taking into account different contextual factors. She is also involved in research of the NCCR LIVES on the question how the meso-level and policy context affects trajectories of economic vulnerability.
Lena Ajdacic
Lena Ajdacic holds a research master degree in Social Sciences, with a specialisation in political economy and quantitative research methods from the University of Amsterdam. During the studies in Amsterdam she was embedded in the CORPNET research group. Currently, she is doing her PhD in the FNS project “The Rise of the Financial Elite – Access, Integration and Spread of Power" headed by Felix Bühlmann at the University of Lausanne.
Research interests Lena's main interests are in the field of economic inequalities, corporate power and network analysis. During her master thesis she focused on 'the wealth defense industry' surrounding international tax minimisation. In her PhD project she studies the networks and the modalities of influence of the global financial elite. She applies quantitative methods on economic datasets, which cover companies and top executives world-wide.
Nursel Alkoç
is a graduate assistant at the Institute de social sciences and a PhD candidate in the framework of the FORS-SSP common scientific program since May 2021. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Boğaziçi University and a master’s degree in public opinion and survey methodology from the Universities of Lausanne, Lucerne, and Neuchatel. Her main research interests are social inequalities, political participation, intersectionality, and quantitative research methods.
Marc Asensio Manjon
Marc Asensio is a graduate assistant of Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne since November 2019 and a PhD cancidate in the framework of the FORS-SSP collaboration program. Marc holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and a MSc in Survey methods for social research (University of Essex). Previously, he worked as a researcher at the Research and Expertize Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) where he was mainly involved in projects related to the European Social Survey.
His main research interests are survey data quality, web surveys, questionnaire design & improvement and new tools for data collection.
Fei Bian
Fei Bian joined LINES as a SNF doctoral student in October 2019. Before joining the Social Sciences department at the University of Lausanne, Fei Bian participated in the programme of the European Doctoral School of Demography in Denmark. She holds a Master's degree in Social Sciences, focusing on Demography and Social Data, from the Université de Picardie Jules Verne in France.
Her research interests include family, gender and social inequalities. She is writing a thesis as part of the SNF project "Coupled Inequalities. Trends and differences between countries in the role of the partner's socio-economic resources in professional careers (COINEQ)".
Jérôme Blondé
Jérôme Blondé completed his PhD in social psychology at the University of Aix-Marseille in 2015. He then moved at the department of psychology at the University of Sussex for 6 months to work as a post-doctoral fellow. In the fall of 2017, he came to the University of Geneva where he worked at the department of social psychology and applied psychology. He is still currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Geneva and concomitantly joined LINES as a senior FNS researcher since September 2019.
His main research interests revolve around persuasion and social influence, health communication, identity processes in health behaviours and health inequalities, collective actions and justice processes, and discrimination against sexual minorities.
Leandro Ivan Canzio
Mengling Cheng
Mengling holds a Master’s Degree from Peking University Department of Sociology in 2016. From 2018 to 2019, Mengling was funded as a German Chancellor Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to carry out a research on long-term care insurance at the German Centre of Gerontology.
Currently, Mengling is a Marie-Curie/SNSF PhD Student at the University of Lausanne, working on the vulnerability among older people from a life course perspective. Mengling’s research interests include: later-life health, social determinants of health, life course perspective, cross-national studies, and etc.
Aurélie Chopard-di-Jean
Aurélie Chopard-dit-Jean is graduated in psychology and sociology at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté. Her research deals with the losses experienced by old people at the end of their life and on the attachment theory in old age, in a life course perspective.
Her current PhD research takes place between the University of Lausanne and the University Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (with a co-tutorship) and she is member of the doctoral program LIVES. Her research aims to understand the role of attachment in how old individuals in nursing home experience approaching death.
Cecilia Delgado
In September 2021, Cecilia Delgado joins LINES as a graduate assistant in life course social psychology. She holds a master's degree in social sciences with a focus on life course, inequalities and social policies from the University of Lausanne. And, in fall 2021, she joins the LIVES doctoral program for PHD students interested in life course analysis. Her research interests include social inequalities, mental health, migration, and quantitative research methods.
Ibrahima Dina Diatta
Ibrahima Dina Diatta is a PhD student at the Life Course and Inequality Research Centre in Lausanne. His research focus is on missing data, longitudinal analysis. The main objective of his doctoral thesis is the application of multiple imputation method in a longitudinal context. In addition, he works as a teaching assistant for the courses : quantitative methods and substance use : analyses of trajectories. Ibrahima Dina Diatta holds a master degree in Statistics from Neuchatel University and have practical experiences in clinical studiesand statistical analysis applied in the health related research.
Kevin Emery
Lucile Franz
Lucile Franz's research focuses on social policy in Vaud, with emphasis on policies concerning extreme poverty reduction. She conducts research in low-threshold reception centres in order to understand the different types of care available to the most vulnerable populations, which tend to oscillate between social services and security measures.
Dinah Gross
Dinah Gross is a sociologist and SNF researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lausanne and at the Service de la recherche en éducation (SRED, Geneva). She completed a degree in philosophy and a postgraduate degree in social sciences at the University of Geneva and was a member of LINES as a teaching assistant during five years. She has also been a researcher at the Haute école de travail social et de la santé (EESP) in Lausanne and SNF researcher at the Centre interfacultaire de gérontologie et d’étude des vulnérabilités of the University of Geneva.
Her research deals with the effects of gender and social origin on occupational representations, aspirations and trajectories in a life course perspective. Her current research in the framework of the project "Les parcours de formation professionnelle au prisme du genre et de l’orientation sexuelle" deals with gender-related discrimination in VET.
Valeria Insarauto
Valeria Insarauto is junior lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lausanne. Sociologist, PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, she was temporary teaching and research associate at Aix-Marseille University, postdoctoral researcher at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, and senior SNSF researcher at the Center in Gender studies at the University of Lausanne, before joining LINES in 2020. Her research interests and activities focus on gender inequalities in employment, work, professions, in the light of issues related to precariousness, the articulation between professional and family life, and discrimination, from a quantitative and international comparative perspective.
Fiona Köster
Nathalie Vigna
Thanks to a bi-national course of study, Nathalie Vigna obtained the Master Degree in International Sciences at the University of Turin and the Master Degree in Comparative Political Sciences and Sociology of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Bordeaux. Then she collaborated to the research project ValOrienta of the University of Turin, focused on educational inequalities and on a project of school guidance for disadvantaged students.
She is now beginning a doctorate in the framework of the common scientific program FORS-SSP. Her research is about the evolution of inequalities and subjective social status; it is a comparison over time and space. Her research interests are social inequalities, life-course studies, sociology of education.
Yang Li
is a gerontologist and SNSF Senior Researcher. His research examines aging, inequality, and well-being. Conceptually grounded in the life course and ecological perspectives, his research emphasizes the role of geography and social context in shaping inequalities in multidimensional well-being over the life course. Education: PhD and MS in Gerontology (University of Massachusetts); MA in Economics (Boston University); BA in Economics (New York University).
Benjamin Ménard
Jad Moawad
Since September 2018 Jad Moawad is a graduate assistant of Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne. Before joining the Social Sciences department at UNIL, he completed his studies at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He obtained a Master in Political Philosophy that was focused on political and social theories and another Master in Sociology and Demography that was centred on quantitative research methods.
His research interests are quantitative research methods, social stratification, the Great recession, inter- and intragenerational transmissions and comparative labour market research. While recent research is analysing the repercussions of the 2007/2008 financial crisis, sociologists have neglected important questions related to the institutions that govern the amount and type of poverty and inequality generated by the Great Recession. His research aims to cover this gap.
Sandrine Morel
After graduating from a Bachelor of Arts in social sciences (and psychology as a secondary discipline), Sandrine Morel pursued with a Master’s degree in social sciences (specific orientation : Life Course). Her master’s thesis was about shared custody in Switzerland from the point of view of fathers. She worked then as a junior research assistant on the SNSF Project « Gendered Globalisation of Legal Professions ». In her doctoral thesis, she studies the family and work trajectories of parents (of minor children) before and after their union dissolution. More specifically, Sandrine Morel wonders about the social norms regarding this transition. She also tends to choose a quantitative and qualitative approach in her research.
Maud Reveilhac
After a Bachelor in Political Science at Lausanne University, Maud Reveilhac received her M.A. in Survey Methodology and Public Opinion from the Universities of Lausanne, Luzern and Neuchatel in February 2018. During her Mater Thesis, Maud Reveilhac chose a social psychology orientation. She focused on political behaviour with special interest on direct democracy and political institutions, especially Swiss politics. She started working at FORS as a scientific collaborator in April 2018. Her work involves survey preparation and management, as well as data preparation and analysis for repeated international surveys in Switzerland (especially the ESS) and for large-scale web surveys for SELECTS, as well as other projects at FORS. In April 2019, she started working as a graduate assistant at the Institute of social sciences. She is particularly interested in the development and challenges of new technology for conducting survey research and in the complementarity of social media data with traditional survey data. She is currently writing her PhD Thesis on the relationship between populism and direct democracy.
Cléolia Sabot
Núria Sánchez-Mira
Núria Sánchez-Mira is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lausanne. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has been visiting fellow at the European Work and Employment Research Centre, University of Manchester, and the Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen, Georg-August-Universität. She was awarded the Ángel Rozas Award to Research in the Social Sciences from the Cipriano García Foundation for her doctoral dissertation on the impact of the Great Recession on work–family arrangements across Europe.
Her research interests include the study of work and employment from a gender perspective, family diversity and family relations. She applies a life course perspective in her research, and is interested in the development of novel methodological approaches.
Rita Schmutz
Rita Schmutz has a bachelor’s degree in public policy from the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and she graduated with honors in Master of Science in Applied Economics from the University of Neuchâtel. Her master thesis was awarded the 2020 Henri Grandjean Prize in Economics. She also has a CAS in Public Governance and Administration from ETH Zurich. She worked with public policy evaluation in the Brazilian government and in the United Nations.
Her research interested are concentrated on social policy evaluation, education, and early childhood interventions. Her PhD thesis is focused on measuring the effects of the Swiss compulsory school reform and how early childhood policies can be used as a two-generation approach to address systemic inequities.
Nathalie Vigna
Thanks to a bi-national course of study, Nathalie Vigna obtained the Master Degree in International Sciences at the University of Turin and the Master Degree in Comparative Political Sciences and Sociology of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Bordeaux. Then she collaborated to the research project ValOrienta of the University of Turin, focused on educational inequalities and on a project of school guidance for disadvantaged students.
She is now beginning a doctorate in the framework of the common scientific program FORS-SSP. Her research is about the evolution of inequalities and subjective social status; it is a comparison over time and space. Her research interests are social inequalities, life-course studies, sociology of education.
Camilla Gaiaschi
Steven Piguet
Steven Piguet studied Political Science and History at UniL (MA 2009). Since 2007, he has been woriking on the SNSF research project “Swiss Elites in the 20th century”.
He is also associated with the Observatory of Swiss Elites (Obelis) founded in 2015 and the technical platform of LaDHUL (PlaTec) since 2019.
Currently, he contributes to data management for the FNS projects “Financial elite,” “Rockefeller fellows,” “Local power structures and transnational connections”. He is also a research assistant at Geneva University in an ERC project on “Citizen Sciences”.
Giannina Vaccaro
Giannina Vaccaro (PhD in Economics) is an applied micro-economist with more than 10 years of experience, working in Switzerland England, the United States, and Peru.
Giannina has broad experiences in policy evaluation and econometric analysis. She uses economic models and a wide set of methodological approaches to answer economic questions, especially related to labor economics and gender equality. By identifying and analyzing large administrative and granular individual level datasets, Giannina provided insights for improving social welfare and firm’s productivity.
Giannina’s research interests also extend to questions related to Retirement, Health, Urban Economics, as well as Economics of Development.
