University of Geneva

Founded in 1559 by Jean Calvin, the University of Geneva (UNIGE) is dedicated to thinking, teaching, dialogue and research. With 16’000 students of more than 140 different nationalities, it is Switzerland’s second largest university.

UNIGE offers more than 280 types of degrees and more than 250 Continuing Education programmes covering an extremely wide variety of fields: exact sciences, medicine and humanities. Its domains of excellence in research include life sciences (molecular biology, bio-informatics), physics of elementary particles, and astrophysics. UNIGE is also host and co-host to six National Centres of Competence in Research: Frontiers in Genetics, Materials with Novel Electronic Properties (MaNEP), Chemical Biology, Affective Sciences, Synaptic Bases of Mental Diseases and LIVES-Overcoming vulnerabilities in a life course perspective.

Just like the city of Geneva itself, the university enjoys a strong international reputation, both for the quality of its research (it ranks among the top institutions among the League of European Research Universities) and the excellence of its education. This acclaim has been won in part due to its strong ties to many national and international Geneva-based organizations, such as the World Health Organization, the International Telecommunications Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

For more information about UNIGE please visit: http://www.unige.ch/

Members of the Swiss team

Marco Giugni (marco.giugni@unige.ch) is the principal investigator of the Swiss team and the Coordinator of the LIVEWHAT project. He is a Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations and Director of the Institute of Citizenship Studies (InCite) at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research interests focus on social movements and protest, but he has also published widely on social exclusion and the participation of disadvantaged and discriminated groups such as the unemployed and immigrants. He has participated and coordinated numerous research projects, funded by the Swiss national funding agency and the European Commission, including the Swiss case of the Caught in the Act of Protest research project, see: www.protestsurvey.eu. Publications include 9 books, 10 edited collections, and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. His books were published, among others, by Ashgate, Palgrave, Rowman & Littlefield, and the University of Minnesota Press. In addition, he has edited or co-edited a number of special issues for scholarly journals such as Swiss Journal of Sociology (editor, 2004), Mobilization (editor, 2008), Revue Suisse de Travail Social (editor, 2011), Ethnicities (co-editor, 2013), International Journal of Social Welfare (co-editor, 2013). He is also European Editor of Mobilization, a leading international journal focusing on social movements and protest and as such has a wealth of practical experience in publishing and editing.

Jasmine Lorenzini holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Geneva. In her doctoral research, “Unemployment and Citizenship: Social and Political Participation of Unemployed Youth in Geneva”, she addresses the consequences of long-term unemployment for youth political participation. Jasmine Lorenzini previously worked on YOUNEX – a European research project on “Youth, Unemployment, and Exclusion” financed by the European Commission under the seventh framework program. Jasmine Lorenzini was visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship at McGill University in Montréal and in the research unit “Skill Formation and Labor Market” at the WZB in Berlin. In 2013, she obtained her Ph.D. and worked as teaching assistant at the department of political science and international relations at the University of Geneva.

Maria M. Mexi is senior research fellow at the Institute of Citizenship Studies (InCite) at the University of Geneva. She has completed a postdoc at the University of Geneva and she holds a Doctorate (DPhil) in Politics and International Relations and an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford, an MSc in European Social Policy with Distinction from the London School of Economics, and a BA in History with High Distinction from the American College of Greece. Dr Mexi has conducted research in the areas of European social policy, youth mobilization and solidarity forms in times of crisis, and she has developed and managed numerous research and technical assistance (including, capacity building) projects in collaboration with universities, international organizations, consulting agencies and NGOs. She also works as a consultant for international organizations in the area of social policy, while her current research interests fall within the areas of youth political participation, social dialogue and the future of work.