Guido Alfani

Guido Alfani is a Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University, Milan. His areas of interest include economic history and demography, with a focus on long-term dynamics, on economic inequality and social mobility, and on the history of epidemics and pandemics.

Alfani is also an Affiliated Scholar of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality (New York, U.S.); a Research Fellow of CEPR – Center for Economic Policy and Research (London, U.K.) and a Research Associate of CAGE – Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (Warwick, U.K.). At Bocconi University, he is a member of the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and of IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research). During 2013-2019, he served as director of the Master of Science in Economic and Social Sciences at Bocconi.

Alfani has also held visiting positions at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France); the University of Glasgow (U.K.), with a grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh; the Centre for Population Studies of the University of Umeå (Sweden); the Université Bordeaux3 (France); the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (U.K.), with a research grant from Wellcome Trust; the Centre Roland Mousnier (Paris, France); the Nuffield College at Oxford University (U.K.); the London School of Economics (U.K.); the Trinity College in Dublin (Ireland). He is currently a member of the scientific committee of the Datini Foundation, of the international advisory board of the Posthumus Institute-Research School for Economic and Social History and of the board of trustees of the European Historical Economics Society (EHES). He is an associate editor of Genus and a member of the editorial board of Explorations in Economic History and of the European Review of Economic History. During 2009-2015, he was the chief editor of the journal Popolazione e Storia.

In 2011, Alfani was awarded an ERC Starting Research Grant for the project EINITE – Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe, 1300-1800 (project running from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2016). In 2016, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Research Grant for the project SMITE-Social Mobility and Inequality across Italy and Europe, 1300-1800 (project running from 1 June 2017 to 31 May 2022).