Project Members

Principal Investigator

Catherine De Vries is Dean and Professor of Political Science at Bocconi University, and she is also a Research Associate at the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy. Her work can be broadly situated in the areas political behaviour, political economy and EU politics, and has appeared in leading political science journals, such as the American Political Science Review and Annual Review of Political Science, and university presses, Oxford and Princeton University Press.

Research Team

Simone Cremaschi is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Sociology at the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy where he works on the European Research Council Project LOSS. More broadly, his research addresses immigrant marginalization, intergroup relations, and the social determinants of political behaviour. He holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute.

Paula Rettl is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University (Milan). Her research lies at the intersection of political economy and comparative political behavior. In particular, her research focuses on how material self-interest shapes political behavior, often in unexpected ways. She studies this topic by testing new arguments with quasi-experimental designs and survey experiments.  Her regional focus is on Latin America and Europe, where she lived for extended periods. In June 2020, Paula joined the Dondena Centre as a Research Associate for the LOSS project.

Renu Singh is a faculty member in the Department of Social and Political Sciences and a research fellow at the DONDENA Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy at Bocconi University. She has been working with the LOSS project team since March 2022. Renu is also a scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown and an executive board member for the International Studies Association Global Health Studies Section. Previously, Renu was a research assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a Fulbright fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin. Her research is motivated by interests in the relationship between political institutions, public opinion, and policy change in the context of public health policy, science policy, and global health security and governance. Renu work has been published or is forthcoming in BMJ Global Health, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, and Cleaner and Responsible Consumption, among others. Renu has a BA in Political Science and a BS in Microbiology from UMass Amherst, an MS in Public Policy and Administration from LSE, and an MA and PhD in Government from Georgetown.

Nicola Bariletto is a pre-doctoral research assistant for the ERC LOSS project hosted by the Dondena research center. He holds a BSc in International Politics and Government and a MSc in Economics and Social Sciences, both earned at Bocconi University. His main research interests lie in the fields of mathematical statistics and probability theory.

Sara Luxmoore is a predoctoral researcher on the LOSS project at Dondena, with research interests in political psychology, quantitative research methods and comparative historical analysis. She holds an MSc in Social Data Science and BSc in Philosophy and Politics from the London School of Economics and UC Berkeley, where she worked as a researcher and teaching assistant at the Data Science Institute and LSE Cities. Before joining Dondena, Sara taught Python, R, Stata and GIS at the Digital Skills Lab and worked as a researcher with the CIVICA funded European Polarisation Observatory.  

Marco Cappellutti is a first-year PhD student at the UCL Department of Political Science. He holds a BSc in Economic and Social Sciences and a MSc in Politics and Policy Analysis from Bocconi University. He also spent an exchange semester at the Hertie School in Berlin. Prior to joining UCL, he interned at the Laboratory for Effective Anti-Poverty Policies at Bocconi University. Marco was a research assistant for LOSS from March 2021 to July 2022.

Francesco Raffaelli is a PhD student at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Social Sciences and a Master’s degree in Politics and Policy Analysis from Bocconi University. His current research interests include the fields of Comparative Political Economy, European Politics, Political Behavior, and Causal Inference. Francesco has joined and worked on the LOSS Project during the spring of 2021.

Elena Marseglia is a third year Ph.D. student in Public Policy and Administration at Bocconi University. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Social Sciences and a Master's Degree in Economics and Management of Government and International Organizations from Bocconi University. Her current research interests span, but are not limited to, EU and public policy, political economy, and sociology. She joined the DONDENA Centre for Research on Social Public Dynamics and Public Policy in September 2020 working on the LOSS project for one year, supporting the team in refining the literature, running preliminary analysis on the European Social Survey data, and assisting with the empirical strategy and coding on panel data. She is currently involved in a project on the “Europeanization of National Politics” and is a teaching assistant for the international relations, public finance, and public economics Bachelor courses at Bocconi University.