European Academy of Sociology - Fellows

Prof. Dr. Gianluca Manzo

Gianluca Manzo earned a Ph.D. in Methodology and Epistemology of Social Sciences from Trento University (Italy, 2006), as well as a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Philosophy of Science (2006) and a HDR (habilitation à diriger des recherches) in Social Sciences and Knowledge Sciences (2019) from Sorbonne University. He currently is Professor of Sociology at Sorbonne University. Prior to that, he was a researcher in sociology at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a member of GEMASS, a research unit for which he served as deputy director from 2018 to 2020. Manzo has held visiting positions and teaching appointments in US and Europe, including, Columbia University, the University of Oxford (Nuffield College), the University of Mannheim and Trento, and the European University Institute. He served as vice-president of the International Network of Analytical Sociology from 2013 to 2018, as chair of the Rationality and Society section of the American Sociological Association from 2020 to 2022 and he seated on the scientific committee (for sociology and law) of the CNRS from 2012 to 2016 and from 2021 to 2025. Manzo developed empirically-oriented generative models of educational inequalities in France and Italy; of the diffusion of technological innovations in small communities of potters in India and Kenya; and of virus propagation in France. He also studied theoretical generative models of relative deprivation feelings as well as of reputational hierarchies. Methodologically, these works relied on various combinations of statistical analysis of survey data, social network analysis and agent-based computational models. Manzo finally devoted part of his research to sociological theory and the epistemology of social sciences, in particular by writing on analytical sociology’s history and principles as well as on agent-based computational modeling and its links with causal inference techniques. Some of these works were awarded best article prizes by the American Sociological Association and the International Sociological Association.