Biography

Stefano Ronchi is a Max Weber Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the EUI. He carried out his PhD in the Research Training Group SOCLIFE at the University of Cologne/University Duisburg-Essen. He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Pavia, an MA in International Labour and Social Policies from the University of Milan, and an Advanced Master in Public Policy and Social Change from Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin. He was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Social Policy in Antwerp (with an InGRID 7th Framework Grant) and at KU Leuven (with a Jos Berghman WelfareStudies Stipend).
Stefano's research interests include comparative welfare state analysis, labour market policies and the politics of social policy, topics which he addresses with both quantitative and qualitative methods. His PhD dissertation looked at welfare state change in Europe through the lens of the 'social investment approach'. The thesis assessed the divergence in the outcomes of social investment-oriented policies across European welfare states.
At the EUI, Stefano will develop his PhD thesis into a book. He will also further extend his research agenda: on the one hand, by assessing a broader range of well-being returns on social investment policies; on the other, by studying the determinants of the (non-) development of social investment from a comparative political economy perspective.
During his PhD, Stefano taught his own BA course on 'The origins and transformation of European welfare states' at the Cologne Centre for Comparative Politics (University of Cologne).