Maurizio Ferrera

Maurizio Ferrera (1955) graduated in Philosophy in Turin and later obtained a MA in Political Science from Stanford University and a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence.

Between 1984 and 2003, he taught at the University of Pavia as a researcher (1984-1987), associate professor (1987-1994), and finally as a full professor. He was Vice-Director of the "Poleis" research center at Bocconi University for a long time, where he also taught courses in Political Science and European Integration. Since 2003, he has been a Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Milan. He has been a Visiting Professor at numerous foreign universities, including the London School of Economics, UC-Berkeley, McGill, the Juan March Institute, and the European University Institute – where in 1998-99 he directed the "European Forum" program, dedicated to welfare state issues.

It is part of numerous organizations and scientific committees, including the Group of Societal Policy Advisers at the European Commission, the Scientific Committee of Confindustria, the Board of Directors of the Luigi Einaudi Research and Documentation Center in Turin. It is also part of the Board of Directors of the Carlo Alberto College in Moncalieri, where in 2003 he founded URGE (Research Unit on European Governance).

He is a member of the editorial boards of many Italian and foreign journals; between 1998 and 2000 he was co-director of the Italian Journal of Political Science. He directs the series "Public Policies in Italy" for Il Mulino and the series "Studies in the political economy of welfare" for Routledge (together with Martin Rhodes). Since 2004 he has been a columnist for the "Corriere della Sera".

He has collaborated over the years on various investigative commissions and working groups for the Italian government, the European Union, the OECD, and the ILO. He was a member of the Onofri Commission (1997), the Commission of Inquiry on Social Exclusion (1998-2001), and the High Level Group on the Modernization of Social Protection at the European Commission (1998).

His main fields of research are comparative politics and public policy analysis, with particular reference to issues of the welfare state and European integration. He has published essays in major international journals including West European Politics, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Common Market Studies. His most recent books include: Governance and Politics in the European Union (edited with M. Giuliani, Il Mulino, 2008), The D Factor. Why Women's Work Will Make Italy Grow (Mondadori, 2008); Social Policies (Il Mulino, 2006); The Boundaries of Welfare (Oxford University Press, 2005).