Prof. Dr. Valentina Di Stasio
Contact
Valentina Di Stasio is Associate Professor at the department of Interdisciplinary Social Science of Utrecht University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Skill Formation and Labour Markets Research Department and a fellow of the College for Interdisciplinary Education Research (CIDER) until 12/2015. After leaving the WZB, Valentina worked as Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at the University of Oxford (Nuffield College), where she coordinated a field experiment to test ethnic, gender and religious discrimination in the British labour market. This study is part of the GEMM project (see GEMM project: gemm2020.eu), the first cross-nationally harmonized correspondence test conducted simultaneously in five countries (Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain). Valentina obtained her PhD from the University of Amsterdam. Her dissertation, titled 'Why education matters to employers: A vignette study in Italy, England and the Netherlands' was a comparative study of whether and why employers rely on educational signals for their hiring decisions. The dissertation was awarded a prize for "Best PhD thesis of the year" by the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR). Her research interests are in the field of social stratification, with a focus on labour market inequalities. Her work is comparative and based on both experimental methods (correspondence tests and factorial surveys) and analysis of survey data. In 2021, she received the ERC Starting Grant for the project TARGETS (2022-2027), a cross-national multi-actor and multi-method study on the topic of ethnic discrimination at the workplace.
Selected Publications
Di Stasio, V., Lancee B., Veit S. And Yemane R. (2019). “Muslim by default or religious discrimination? Results from a set of harmonized field experiments”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1622826.
Larsen, E.N. and V. Di Stasio (2019). “Different contexts, similar penalties? Discrimination towards Pakistani in Norway and the UK”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1622777.
A. Heath and V. Di Stasio (online first). “Field experiments on racial and ethnic discrimination in Britain, 1966 -2017”. Forthcoming. The British Journal of Sociology. DOI:10.1111/1468-4446.12676.
Di Stasio, V. and H. Solga (2017). “Education as Social Policy - Institutions, Public Support and Outcomes over the Life Course” (Introduction to the 2017 Special Issue). Journal of European Social Policy 27(4): 313- 319.
Di Stasio, V. (2017). “‘Diversion or safety net?’ The impact of institutions on public opinion on vocational education.” Journal of European Social Policy 27(4):360-372.
Bills, D.B., V. Di Stasio and K. Gërxhani (2017). “The Demand Side of the Hiring Process: Employers in the Labor Market.” Annual Review of Sociology 43: 291-310.
Di Stasio, V. (2017). “Who’s ahead in the labour queue? The employers’ perspective on overeducation, undereducation and horizontal mismatches.” Sociology of Education 90(2): 109-126.
Di Stasio, V. and H.G. van de Werfhorst (2016). “Why does education matter to employers? A vignette study in England and Netherlands.” Social Forces 95(1): 77-106.
- GEMM: field experiments of discrimination
The GEMM project addresses the ‘Migration, Prosperity and Growth Dimension’ of the call on the European Growth Agenda within the Horizon 2020 framework of the European Commission. Over 20 researchers located in eight European countries are involved in the project. Valentina focuses on ethnic discrimination in the British labour market, together with Professor Anthony Heath (University of Oxford, Nuffield College).
- CIDER (College for Interdisciplinary Education Research)