Mattia Vacchiano

MA from the University of Bologna, he obtained his PhD in Sociology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (extraordinary disseration award 2019). He currently works as a lecturer (maître-assistant) for the Department of Sociology of the University of Geneva. He has been Senior SNF researcher at the University of Lausanne (2018-2021) and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Buenos Aires (2016). He is a member of the Swiss Center of Expertise in Life Course Research LIVES.

His research focuses on social capital, networks and social relationships. During his PhD, he studied these aspects in relation to inequalities in youth career trajectories and the transition to adulthood. As postdoctoral researcher, he further investigated the influence of social relations for psychological health, thus studying how social support is cultivated in leisure and digital contexts. On a theoretical level, he has been working at the integration of social network analysis and life course research, through peer-review articles and co-editing the special issue 'Networked Lives'. Currently, he is working at the design of the project “The Empty Office”, which aims to study the effects of teleworking on social relationships.

On a methodological level, he has worked with mixed methods and hybrid questionnaires. He analized longitudinal, network and narrative data, although he works mainly - but not exclusively - with quantitative methods. His main methodological expertises are multilevel analysis and personal networks methods. 

His work has been published in Computers in Human Behavior, Advances in Life Course Research, Social Indicators Research, Sociological Research Online, Leisure Studies, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour and other peer-reviewed international journals.