About us

Prof. Andrea Lasagni - Coordinator - Department of Economics and Management. 

Associate Professor in Applied Economics at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Parma. After a Master of Science in International Economics at the University of Sussex (UK) he obtained a PhD in Political Economy at the University of Pavia. His areas of interest are Institutions and productivity, Dimension and growth of enterprises and Migrant entrepreneurship.

Prof. Simone Baglioni - Coordinator - Department of Economics and Management. 

Simone Baglioni is Full Professor of Sociology in the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Parma. He is the coordinator and PI of the Horizon 2020 project Sirius (www.sirius-project.eu) which investigates barriers and enablers of labour market integration of third country nationals in European countries. Prior to joining Parma University in April 2020, Simone has worked at Glasgow Caledonian University, at the Universities of Geneva and Neuchatel in Switzerland, and at Bocconi University and University of Florence in Italy.

Prof. Alessandro Arrighetti - Coordinator - Department of Economics and Management. 

He is a Professor in Economics of the Productive Sectors at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Parma. He holds the course in Industrial Economy and Economy of Collective Actions. In the past, he was the President of the Bachelor course in Economy of Development and International Co-operation at the University of Parma. He was a member of the Editorial Board of the journals "Economia e Politica Industriale" (F. Angeli editore, Milano), "L’Industria" (Il Mulino, Bologna) and "Sviluppo Locale" (Rosenberg e Sellier, Torino). He was a member of the scientific societies Sie (Società Italiana degli Economisti) e Siepi (Società Italiana di Economia e Politica Industriale). His main areas of interest are Industrial concentration, Vertical integration, Dynamics of industrial structures, Dimensions and growth of enterprises, Collective actions and co-operation among enterprises, and Migrant entrepreneurship. 

Dr. Jacopo Canello - Researcher - Department of Economics and Management. 

Senior researcher in Applied Economics at the University of Parma since January 2022. He graduated in Economics from Ca' Foscari University in Venice, later obtaining a Master of Science from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from the University of Queensland in Australia. He held teaching and research positions as an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the United States and at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands (2018-2021). From 2008 to 2016, he carried out research as an economic analyst at SOSE S.p.A. His main research topics are global value chains, industrial clusters and industrial districts, migrant entrepreneurship and regional development.

Dr. Michela Semprebon - Researcher - Department of Economics and Management.

Michela is Senior Researcher in Sociology at the University of Parma, since November 2021. Previously she worked at the SSIIM Unesco Chair of the University Iuav of Venice (2017-21), at the University of Bologna (2015-17) and at the University of Milan-Bicocca (2006-15) and taught at the Politecnico of Milan (2015-16), the University of Bologna (2016-18) and the University of Bergamo (2018-20). She was Visiting Researcher at the Haute Ecole des Sciences Sociales in Paris (2019) and at the Center for Migration, Policy and Society in Oxford (2015). She holds a PhD in Urban Sociology from the University of Milano-Bicocca. Her research interests concern: local policies for the inclusion of migrants, reception systems, housing policies, trafficking in human beings and severe exploitation, movements and autonomy of migrants, legal protection and paths of unaccompanied foreign minors. She has worked in the European projects: Erasmus+ PusHhttps://mdl.donau-uni.ac.at/push/(2020-22) and COST IS1102 S.O.S. COHESION (2012-15) http://www.cost-is1102-cohesion.unirc.it/. She was PI of the INSigHT project (2019-21) https://www.insightproject.net/ and has carried out research in this European project and other national projects on migration: FAMI “CapaCityMetro” (2017-18), FARB “Intergenerational relationships and obligations between first and second generations of migrants” (2015-17), PRIN “Small municipalities and social cohesion: urban policies and practices for the social and spatial inclusion of immigrants” (2011-15). 

Dr. Michele Bianchi - Researcher - Department of Economics and Management.

He is currently enrolled as a researcher for the two projects MIGREM (Migrant remittances and transnational ties: care, social change and development across borders) and MIGREMPRISE (Migrant entrepreneurship, employment and innovation in strategic Italian economic sectors: a lever of social pacification?). He was previously involved in the Horizon 2020 project MATILDE https://matilde-migration.eu/ which investigated the impact of international migrations to European rural and mountain areas. Between 2020-21 he worked as a postdoc researcher at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health – at Glasgow Caledonian University. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Education (University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy, 2013) and a Master's degree in Social Work (University of Trento, Italy 2016) and obtained his PhD in Sociology of Governance, Social Participation, and Citizenship in the University Carlo Bo (Urbino, Italy, 2020). In 2018, he was visiting PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto). In 2015, he was an intern at the Hackey Co-operative Development, a community interest company based in London East-end. Bianchi’s main areas of research are the third sector, the social and cooperative economy, community development, and commons.

Dr. Riccardo Rinaldi - Researcher - Department of Economics and Management. 

Graduated in Political Science and International Studies, he pursued his doctorate in Economics at the University of Siena with a thesis in applied economics on the relationship between technological innovation and transformations in the labour market. He is currently a research fellow at the Department of Economics and Business in Parma, in the MIGREMPRISE project dealing with migrant labour and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Valbona Dudi - Researcher - Department of Economics and Management. 

Research fellow at the department of Economics and Management for the PRIN project “Migrant remittances and transnational ties: care, social change and development across borders” (MIGREM). Professor of Economics and Management at the State Institute “Ciro Pollini” of Mortara. Previously adjunct professor of Programming and Control of Tourist Companies at the University of Bologna, Department of Economics (2020 – 2022) and subject expert of Economics and Management at the University of Urbino. During the years 2011 – 2017 was a researcher of Economics and Management at the Department of Economics and Management, Catholic University “Our lady of good counsel”, Tirana, Albania as well as the Coordinator of Faculty of Political Sciences and Management at the aforementioned university. During the years 2007-2011, she worked at the Municipality of Tirana, Department of Economics Development, where she mainly dealt with local development policies aimed at creating and facilitating a favourable climate for the attraction of foreign and non-foreign investments in the local market. During the same period, she was an adjunct professor of Bussiness Communication at the University of Tirana, Department of Economics and Management. Graduated in Economics and Commerce (old system degree) at the University of Pavia (2005). She has a second level Master degree of European Economics Studies achieved at the University of Tirana in collaboration with the University of Bamberg, Germany (2010). In 2020 she concluded her PhD studies in Economics and Management at the University of Urbino with a thesis on immigrant entrepreneurship, focussing in Italy.

Dr. Maria Luisa Caputo - Researcher - Department of Economics and Management. 

Maria Luisa is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Parma. She worked on the Horizon 2020 MATILDE project (2020-2023), where she analysed the social and economic impact of migration in rural and remote Scotland, in North Ayrshire and the Outer Hebrides. She obtained a PhD in Geography at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne with a thesis on the concentration of ethnic and religious groups in the urban context and its representation in terms of "ghetto". In particular, she has dealt with the spatial distribution of the Jewish population in Greater London, in relation to the ritual delimitation of the urban space called "Eruv". She previously worked as a research assistant at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) of the University of Oxford, for the INTERACT project focussing on the role of the country of origin of migrants in the residential integration process; and at the CNRS, France, for the SIESTA project on the territorial dimensions of the EUROPE 2020 Strategy. She taught from 2013 to 2019, initially as teaching assistant at the University of Paris 1 and other Parisian universities; and during the last two years as Attaché temporaire d'Enseignement et de Recherche (ATER) at the University of Paris Est-Creteil.

Andrea Marini - Researcher - Department of Economics and Management. 

Junior research fellow at the University of Parma in the MIGREMPRISE project (Migrant entrepreneurship, employment and innovation in strategic Italian economic sectors: a lever of social pacification?). He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Political, Social and International Sciences (2017) and a Master's Degree in Local and Global Development (2021), both obtained at the University of Bologna. He wrote the Master's Degree thesis entitled: Delocalizzati sul posto: l’esperienza dei rider immigrati nell’ambito del food delivery digitale a Modena, whose results have been presented in the context of the Poster Session during the VI annual conference of SISEC (Italian Society of Economic Sociology ). Andrea’s main topics of interest are migration, the labour market, precarious work and the Platform economy.