Biography
Valentina Di Stasio is a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science of Utrecht University, with an affiliation to the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). Her research focuses on labour market inequalities and particularly on hiring and workplace discrimination. Her work is comparative and based on both experimental (correspondence tests and factorial surveys) and observational methods (attitudinal surveys).
Valentina is the Principal Investigator of the project TARGETS (ERC Starting Grant, 2022-2027), a cross-national, interdisciplinary and multi-method study of: 1) how discriminatory events are perceived by victims and bystanders; 2) the process through which discrimination claims are evaluated as convincing or unfounded, at the workplace and in the courtroom; 3) the strategies HR managers adopt to prevent workplace discrimination; and 4) the coping strategies adopted by victims to react to discriminatory experiences. She will combine perspectives from sociology, social psychology, socio-legal studies and organizational studies, and conduct part of this project during her time at the EUI.
Her research has been published in: Annual Review of Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, Sociology, Social Forces, European Sociological Review, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Social Psychology Quarterly, etc. Her work on ethnic and religious discrimination was also covered in The Economist, The Guardian, BBC News, WiredUK, NRC Handelsblad, Trouw. Valentina's most recent work has centered on: Islamophobia and anti-Muslim discrimination in European labour markets; discrimination of EU nationals after the Brexit referendum; the study of ethnic stereotypes through an intersectional lens.
Before joining Utrecht University, Valentina was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) and at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre. She obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Amsterdam in January 2014.