I am an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan. My research is concerned with cultural change, with particular attention to the interrelationships between religion and marketing, transformations in the use of religious symbols, and the relationship between Catholicism and the media. I have published the first major study on religion and advertising in Italy. I have also co-authored a book on the controversies sparked by the appropriation of religious symbols outside the religious domain and edited a volume on the renewed public presence of religions in Western societies. My papers have won the Taylor & Francis Sociology of Religion Postgraduate Essay Prize from the Sociology of Religion Study Group of the British Sociological Association and the Young Sociologists’ Award from the Italian Sociological Association.
Since October 2023, I have been the principal investigator for a research project, entitled “Religion in Public: Forms and Dynamics of Religious Publicization in Italy,” funded by Italy’s Ministry of University (MUR-PRIN 2022). I have been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication (2010), Visiting Researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information (2017 and 2018), and Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta’s Department of Media and Technology Studies (2025).
I serve as an Advisory Board member of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies and Editorial Board member of Sociologica, Religions, and Facta Universitatis.