Simona Piattoni - Biography#

Simona Piattoni (BA/MA Economics, Bocconi University 1986; PhD Political Science, MIT 1996) has been Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Trento between 2001 and 2010 and Full Professor of Political Science since 2011 at the same university, having held a Professorship in European Politics at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) in the interim (2010-2011). She began her career at the University of Tromsø (Norway) as Assistant, then Associate Professor of Comparative Politics (1994-2001) and was Adjunct Professor at the University of Agder (Norway) (2014-2018). She was President of the Conference Group on Italian Politics and Society (CONGRIPS) – a related session of the American Political Science Association - between 2010 and 2012 and was awarded by the same the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022. She was a member of the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) from 2009 to 2015, serving as Chair of the same during the second three-year term (2012 - 2015). She was President of the Società Italiana di Scienza Politica (SISP) between 2015 and 2018 and served on the Executive Committee of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) between 2018 and 2021. At the University of Trento she has taught a wide range of political science courses at BA, MA and PhD levels ranging from Comparative Politics to European Politics, from Local Government to Multilevel Governance, from Democracy in Europe to Politics and Global Transformations. She has been lecturer and doctoral thesis supervisor in the LUISS University PhD program in Politics since 2019. After a first spate of publications on clientelism (Clientelism, Interests and Democratic Representation, CUP 2001; Il clientelismo. L’Italia in prospettiva comparata, Carocci 2005; Le virtù del clientelismo: una critica non convenzionale, Laterza 2007), her scholarly production has focused on EU cohesion policy and multilevel governance (The Theory of Multilevel Governance, OUP 2010; Handbook on EU Cohesion Policy, Edward Elgar 2016, co-edited with Laura Polverari) and on the Committee of the Regions (Shaping Policy from Below. EU Democracy and the Committee of the Regions, Edward Elgar 2015, co-authored with Justus Schönlau). In addition to several publications on the political economy of the Euro-crisis focused on a comparison between Italy and Germany (among others, Italy and Germany: Incompatible Varieties of Europe? Routledge 2022, co-edited with Ton Notermans), her latest focus is on EU democracy (The European Union: Democratic Principles and Institutional Architectures in Times of Crisis, OUP 2015; The End of Democracy as Delegation and Accountability? Towards a Multilevel, Multidemoi Democracy in Europe, forthcoming OUP).