Dr. Angelo Vito Panaro

Dr. Angelo Vito Panaro

Postdoctoral researcher

Institute of Political Science
Chair of Human Rights Politics


Dr. Angelo Vito Panaro is a postdoctoral researcher at the FAU – Institute of Political Science, where he collaborates with the V-Dem Institute on the “Academic Freedom Index” research project.

Prior to joining FAU, Angelo was a postdoctoral researcher at Bielefeld University (2023-2024) and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milan (2021-2023). From 2019 to 2024 he also served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. His research interests include authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, comparative welfare states, politics of social policy, global poverty and redistribution, and the political economy of income and social inequality. His research has been published in Democratization, Contemporary Politics, Review of Policy Research, Italian Political Science, Italian Political Science Review, among other journals.

In recent years, Angelo has taught courses on autocratization, comparative welfare states, global social redistribution and inequalities, and the politics of social policy. He has also been a visiting fellow at the Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM) at the University of Bremen (2019) and the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (2018).

Angelo is an active member of the Italian Political Science (SISP) Standing Group ‘Political Regimes’, and in 2022 he was awarded the Carlo Maria Santoro Prize for the best paper presented by an early-career researcher at the SISP Conference (co-authored with Dr. Andrea Vaccaro). Further information can be found on Google Scholar, ORCID and X.


  • 2024- present Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Political Science, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
  • 2023-2024 Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany
  • 2021-2023 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Milan, Italy
  • 2021 Ph.D. in Political Science, Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy
  • 2019-2024 Adjunct Professor, Department of Political and Social Sciences/Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Italy
  • 2019 Visiting Fellow, Research Center of Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM), University of Bremen, Germany
  • 2018 Visiting Fellow, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Austria
  • 2016 M.A. in Economics, Department of Economics, Bocconi University, Italy
  • 2012 B.A. in Political Science, Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy

  • Authoritarian regimes
  • Democratic backsliding and academic freedom
  • Comparative welfare states
  • Politics of social policy
  • Global poverty and redistribution
  • Income and social inequality
  • EU social policy

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

Articles

Book chapters

Reviews

Working papers

Policy Reports

Open Pieces