Pietro Castelli Gattinara joined Cosmos in 2015. He is currently research fellow in political science and sociology at Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence. He is currently involved in a comparative research project studying the consequences of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks on public debates in Europe, focusing on critical junctures and deliberation processes in the public sphere. In previous years, he worked in comparative projects on extreme right mobilization, local politics of migration, and electoral campaigning and political communication. After obtaining his PhD at the European University Institute, with a dissertation on party competition on migration in Italy, he joined the department of Politics of the University of Leicester, where he worked on governmental responsiveness to public opinion and protest, and on the political participation of migrants. In 2013 and 2014 he was teaching fellow of Comparative Politics and European Politics at Sciences-Po Paris. From 2015, he has been teaching Minority Politics and Far Right Politics at Monash University, Prato. He is a member of the ECPR standing group on Extremism and Democracy. His interests lie, especially, in the study of comparative politics, social movements, the far right and the politics of immigration in Europe.

He publishes in English and Italian. His most recent publications include: The politics of migration in Italy: local, party and electoral perspectives (Routledge, 2016), and “Neo-fascist mobilization in contemporary Italy: Ideology and repertoire of action of CasaPound Italia”, Journal for deradicalization, Vol. 2 (1), pp. 86-118, 2015.

Research interests: comparative politics, ethnic and migration studies, far-right politics, and political communication