Lecturers

Dr. Lakshmi Balachandran Nair is an Assistant Professor (Research) at the Department of Business and Management at LUISS Guido Carli University (Rome, Italy). Lakshmi’s work mainly focuses on qualitative organizational research methodologies and business ethics (gender, ethical dilemmas etc.). Her articles are published in various academic journals (Organizational Research Methods, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Management Inquiry, Journal of International Management etc., to name a few). Lakshmi has also published books, book chapters, and case studies with Cambridge University Press, Sage Publishing, Pearson Financial Times Press, Taylor & Francis, LUISS University Press etc. For her work, Lakshmi has won several awards and grants, including but not limited to those from, Academy of Management, British Academy of Management, European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies, Academy of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Knowledge, Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences etc. 

My methodological work is on expanding mixed methods research and designs, and on exploring the rigor and boundaries of case study research. Building on existing publications, I am currently working on integrating case study research in mixed methods designs. My substantive research focuses on socio-sustainable transitions. As part of our research program Proof of Transition Concepts (proTract), we explore positive, real-world examples of sustainability transitions that bring together diverse stakeholders to cooperate toward positive, often serendipitous, outcomes. I hold the Chair in Social Research and Methodology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and am Director of the Social Transitions Research Group. Concurrently, I am Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan and am a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Uganda National Academy of Sciences, as well as the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a UN initiative.

Daniel Conway is Reader in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster. His research is situated at the intersections of Feminist International Relations, political sociology and queer theory and with an expertise in qualitative methods. He has published widely on the anti-apartheid and peace activism by white South Africans in the 1980s including Masculinities, Militarisation and the End Conscription Campaign: War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa (Manchester and Johannesburg: Manchester University Press and Wits University Press, 2012), conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the lives and identities of British immigrants in South Africa published as Migration, Space and Transnational Identities: The British in South Africa (with Pauline Leonard, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and is currently writing a third book The Global Politics of LGBTQ+ Pride: Queer Activism and Complicity in Africa, Asia and North America (Bloomsbury Academic) based on ethnographic fieldwork at Pride events in South Africa, East and South Asia and North America. His work has been published in the journals Sociology, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Qualitative Research, Men and Masculinities, Citizenship Studies and the Journal of Southern African Studies. Conway’s research has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy. He is the 2023/24 chair of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

Daniel Conway was awarded a PhD in Politics by Rhodes University, South Africa, an MSc with Commendation in International Relations by the University of Bristol and a BA (Hons) in History and Politics by the University of Exeter.

He is professor of sociology at the Universities of Cologne and Zurich. He was president of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) between 2015 and 2017.

His research interests concentrate on structural equation modeling especially applied to cross-cultural and longitudinal survey data. In his research he analyzes human values and attitudes toward immigrants or other minorities.

Francesco holds the role of Assistant Professor (Rtd-A) at the Department of Statistics of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - Milan.

Previously, he spent two years as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Statistics of the University of California - Irvine (UCI). Before joining UCI, Francesco obtained a Ph.D. in Statistics at the University of Milan - Bicocca and Università della Svizzera italiana (joint program, awarded with honors).

His research is focused on the application of Bayesian methodologies to complex datasets. In particular, he is interested in Bayesian mixtures, Bayesian nonparametric, model-based clustering, shrinkage priors, and dimensionality reduction.

Jolanta Drzewiecka (PhD, Arizona State University, USA) researches discursive constructions of cultural, racial, and national differences and identities to advance a critical intercultural communication framework. She focuses on two areas: immigrant identity and public memories. In the first, she examines how immigrant identities are negotiated and represented in personal and media narratives. Here, she develops a theory as to how immigrants are racially incorporated through intercultural translation in ways that sustain structures of inequality. The latter area explores how public memories are shaped by and shape nationalism. She is particularly interested in how memories of ethnic violence are discursively disabled and blocked and victims rendered unrecognisable to protect fictions of the national self. Here, she combines discourse and rhetorical analyses with psychoanalytic theories.

She has published her research in journals such Communication Theory, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Media Studies in Communication, and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.

Simone Gabbriellini, PhD in Sociology, is a Computational Social Scientist and Data Scientist with more than 15 years of experience in agent-based modelling and social network analysis. He has been post-doc fellow at the University of Trento, and developed models for academic and business teams worldwide, including New York University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and Université Paris-Sorbonne.

As an entrepreneur, he co-founded DocDelta, a digital healthcare startup based in New York City, USA, and Manent.AI, a start-up focused on AI, ML, agent-based simulations and software development, based in Pisa.

He is one of the faculty members of the Behave Summer School on Agent-Based Modelling (University of Milan) since 10 years now, and has published articles in journals such as AI Communications, Revue Française de Sociologie, and Journal of Archaeological Methods and Theory. He is the author of the book Simulare meccanismi sociali con NetLogo (FrancoAngeli, 2010), the first book teaching NetLogo concepts to the Italian reader

He is a Full Professor of Marketing at the Institute of Marketing and Communication Management (IMCA) at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).

Among other things his competence areas are: Branding, Buyer-supplier Relationship, Customer Value, Hospitality and Tourism Marketing Management, Innovation management, Marketing, Marketing Research Methodologies, Onerous Consumption, Public Administration, Supplier Relationships, Sustainable Resource Utilisation.

Michael Grätz is a SNSF professor in sociology at the University of Lausanne. He currently conducts a research project financed by a Starting Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project estimates the evolution of inequality of opportunity in modern societies. He is also an associate professor (docent) at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University.

In the past, he worked at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and Bielefeld University. He received his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in 2015.

His research interests are in the fields of child development, social stratification, and social demography. A major aim of his research is to understand the intergenerational transmission of advantage.

Peter Gruber has a PhD in Physics from TU Wien and a PhD in Finance from the Università della Svizzera italiana. He has joined USI in 2008. His research interests include the economics of volatility, econometrics with non-standard data sets and high performance computing. Dr. Gruber teaches numerical methods with MATLAB and R at USI and in St. Gallen.

He is currently the Director of the Behavioural and Data Science MSc and the Bridges Doctoral Training Centre in Mathematical and Social Sciences, both of which aim to provide and develop quantitative approaches to data in the social sciences. He teaches courses in quantitative approaches to behavioural science, language, and computational social sciences. His publications include work in psychology, communications, education, and economics, and focus on issues associated with large-scale analysis of language.

Eugène Horber is professor emeritus of methodology at the Department of Political Science and International relations, University of Geneva, as well as affiliated researcher at FORS. He holds a PhD degree in Political Science and has taught social science methodology (both quantitative and qualitative), applied computer science, and statistics at the University of Geneva.

He is the director of the Swiss Summer School (Social Science Methodology); main teaching activities in the past include the Essex Summer School, the Carcassonne Summer School, the PRESTA programme (EU programme for South America), Eurostat/TES, ENSAE (Paris) and ENSAI (Rennes).

His research interests and publications are in the area of statistical methodology (data exploration, visual data analysis), survey research and aggregate data analysis, as well as applied computer science (didactic software, hypertext) and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis. He is the author of a software package for exploratory data analysis.

Sebastian Kernbach has a PhD in Communication Science in which he focused on Visual Collaborative Knowledge Work in knowledge-intense collaboration in Professional Services Firms and Design Thinking. He is with the University of St. Gallen where he works as project manager, research associate, and instructor at the Institute of Media and Communications Management.

His research focuses on the role of visual thinking in interpersonal interactions. He is particularly interested in enhancing interactions between consultants and clients through visualization. In addition he provides workshops for professionals, researchers and lecturers on the usefulness of visual thinking.

Prior to his research he worked as consultant for Interbrand, as Head of Branding and Communication of a Swiss startup and as Manager for Marketing and Communication for XEROX. He studied Business Administration and Communication in Breda, Düsseldorf, Copenhagen, Lugano and St. Gallen. His latest book covers visual thinking, storytelling and other elements as part of creativity and productivity in research which was published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. 

Ursina Kuhn is a senior researcher at FORS and the Swiss Household Panel.

After a PhD in political science on voting behavior she worked and led research projects in different disciples of social science, such as sociology, economics, political science and methods of panel data. She has a long experience of collecting, preparing and analyzing data of the Swiss Household Panel, but has also experience using other panel surveys and administrative data.

He is currently titular professor at the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society and rector delegate per research analysis at Università della Svizzera italiana.

His research interest include: Governance and organizational structures of higher education institutions, Institutional theory, particularly institutional logics approaches and hybrid organizations, Development of data infrastructure for S&T studies, Diversity and characterization of higher education systems, Comparative analysis of national reasearch policies and funding systems, Indicators to characterize research funding systems and higher education institutions

He is a survey methodologist at FORS, Lausanne, and member of the Swiss Household Panel team. In addition, he is a lecturer in survey methodology and survey research at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Bern.

His main research interests are nonresponse in cross-sectional surveys and attrition in panel surveys, panel data analysis, as well as causality in social science research. His research includes social inequality issues in different substantive topics such as the labor market, health, or education.

Patrick A. Mello is Assistant Professor of International Security at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Humboldt University Berlin and a Habilitation in Political Science (venia legendi) from the Technical University of Munich.

His research focuses on international relations, foreign and security policy, and comparative methods, especially Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). He has been teaching QCA at the USI Summer School in Social Science Methods since 2016.

He is the author of the award-winning Democratic Participation in Armed Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods (2023). His articles have appeared in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, European Political Science Review, West European Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, and Contemporary Security Policy.

Antonietta is professor of statistics, founder and director of the Data Science Lab at Università della Svizzera italiana, (Lugano) where she served as the Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Economics (2013–2015). She is also adjunct professor at University of Insubria (Como, Italy) and has been nominated fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. She is member of the board of the Swiss Office of Federal Statistics and of the Swiss Statistical Society, and of the Harvard Data Science Review.

Her current research focuses on Bayesian statistics and data science, with a clear interdisciplinary scope with applications to social sciences, life sciences, finance and economics.

She has won awards for excellence in both research and teaching. Antonietta is also involved in public outreach both as an organizer of events and as a speaker and through the media is engaged in the strengthening of the culture of data science.

She is the principal investigator on several projects at the Swiss National Science Foundation and a member of multiple scientific committees representing her areas of expertise.

She is a Professor in Sociology at the University of Lausanne and a Fellow & Director of Studies in Human, Social, and Political Sciences at the Jesus College, University of Cambridge.

Véronique Mottier's research and teaching interests include Social and political theory, Gender, sexuality, and the state, Modernity, race, and identity politics, Welfare states and social exclusion, Coerced sterilisation policies and child removal programs in the Western world, Interpretative research methods, discourse, and narrative analysis.

Andrea Rocci is Full Professor and Director of the Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics at the Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano). He is also Director of the Master programme in Financial Communication offered jointly by the faculties of Economics and Communication Sciences at the same university. He has published extensively in the fields of argumentation, pragmatics, semantics and discourse analysis. He is co-author (with Marcel Danesi) of a textbook on Global linguistics. He has directed / is directing several projects on argumentation in the contexts of journalism, corporate communication and financial communication funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Robin Samuel is an Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg (Department of Social Sciences) and Head of the Centre for Childhood and Youth Research. Previously, he worked as a guest researcher at the University of Bern (Institute of Sociology) and a lecturer at the University of Basel (Social Research and Methodology Group). From 2012 to 2014, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (Department of Sociology) and at Stanford University (Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality), as well as an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (School of Social and Political Science, 2013 to 2017). Robin has taught various courses at the universities of Basel, Bern, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Johannesburg, Luxembourg, and Pretoria.

Peter Schmidt is Professor emeritus of social science methodology at the University of Giessen.

His research concentrates on foundations and applications of generalized latent variable models, especially structural equation models. Applications include cross-country, repeated cross-sections, and panel data. The substantive topics deal with values, attitudes toward minorities, national identity and innovation and the reasoned action approach. He is together with A. Heath, E. Green, E. Davidov and A. Ramos member of the Question Design Team for the immigration module of the ESS 2014.

Flaminio Squazzoni is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan, where he leads the BehaveLab, a centre for research and training on behavioural sociology. Since 2014, he is the editor in chief of JASSS-The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal for agent-based modelling research, and has one of the former presidents of ESSA-European Social Simulation Association, the major scientific association worldwide promoting the application of agent-based modelling in the social sciences (2012-2016). He is the director of the Behave Summer School, one of the most important training events worldwide on agent-based modelling.

He works in the field of agent-based modelling since his PhD project in 1999-2002, and has published articles and comments in journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Social Networks and The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, among many others. He is the author of Agent-Based Computational Sociology (Wiley, 2012).  

He is professor of political methodology at the University of Zurich. His methodological interests span choice models, machine learning, measurement, and multilevel analysis. His substantive interests cover voting behavior and digital democracy, in particular, online deliberative processes. Originally hailing from The Netherlands, he previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Bern. He has published extensively and is co-author of the award-winning book The Ambivalent Partisan (OUP 2012).

Dr Lukasz Walasek is an associate professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, UK. He completed PhD and MSc in Psychology at the University of Essex and a BSc in Psychosocial Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Dr Walasek is a deputy PI on the Midlands Engine project, which aims to improve mental health and productivity in the Midlands region of the UK. He is also a Co-lead of the Behavioural Brain & Society Global Research Priorities, promoting behavioural science research and collaborations between Warwick university, government, and industry.

In his research, Dr Walasek applies insights from data science to study how people make everyday decisions and judgments. His current research interests include context effects, food choice, and natural language processing.