Cristiano Codagnone

Professor,Milan State University and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Co-founder, Open Evidence,

Cristiano Codagnone graduated in economics from Bocconi University (Milan) in 1988, holds a Ph.D. (1995) in sociology from New York University, and was post-doctoral fellow at Utrecht University (1996-1997) supported by the Marie-Curie Human Capital and Mobility Fellowship. Currently he holds a double academic affiliation, as aggregate professor at at Milan State University (Department of Social and Political Sciences) and at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Department of Communication Studies); in Barcelona he is the Director of the UOC spin-off research company Open Evidence SL and of the Research Group Applied Social Science and Behavioural Economics (ASSBE). Beween July 2014 and December he was Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Media and Communication Department of London School of Economics. In the course of his academic career he has also taken several leaves of absence to serve as civil servant at the United Nations (2003-2004) and at the European Union (2009-2011 and 2015-2016). Since 2012 he has designed and directed several experimental behavioural studies to test policy options on behalf of the European Commission in various domains (tobacco packaging, online gambling, car labelling, online marketing to children, transparency of online platforms). Starting in September 2017, still on behalf of the Commission, he will direct a behavioural study on non standard forms of work with respect to attitutudes and awareness towards social protection and employment benefits. This represents a continuation of the work he conducted between 2015 and 2016 on the sharing economy and on online labour platforms, which represent two of the most exhaustive and comprehensive critical essays on this topic and have informed the European Commission communication on the Collaborative Economy released in June of 2016. Cristiano mixed throughout his professional career an interest for high-level social and economic theory, empirical research, and for their practical and concrete applications. He is an academic with a clear entrepreneurial bend and track record in fund raising and managing teams of knowledge workers; he has founded and spearheaded three research companies, and in the last decades he directed dozens of consulting work and policy applied research engagements.

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