Léna Pellandini-Simányi

Dr. Pellandini-Simányi is Associate Professor in the Institute of Marketing and Communication Management. After studying Economics and Marketing (MSc), she earned her PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Previously, she taught at the Sociology Department of LSE, the Institute of Management and Organization of USI and at ELTE Budapest and worked for the Young Foundation's (London) social innovation and social needs program.

She is co-chair of the Economic Sociology Research Network of the Swiss Sociological Association and served as committee member of the American Sociological Association. At USI, she is director of the "Business, Markets and Society" BA specialization, chairwoman of the Complaints Commission and organizes of the IMCA Research seminar series.

Dr. Pellandini-Simányi's research looks at the interrelations between markets and moralities, combining sociology, marketing and organization theory. Her work examines both the consumer and the organizational side of markets, drawing on economic sociology, performativity, practice theory and consumer culture theory, and has focused on financial markets, debt and political consumerism. She is author of the book Consumption Norms and Everyday Ethics and her work has appeared in Economy and Society; Organization Studies; Consumption, Markets and Culture; the Journal of Consumer Culture; Sociology, and the British Journal of Sociology, among others.

Her current research project, 'Social patterning of economic subjectivities and the digital transformation of retail finance in Switzerland', funded by a Swiss National Science Foundation project grant, examines how digital finance reshapes social classes and economic subjectivities. Her previous projects looked at the financialization of everyday life (individual grant, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation), the development of the mortgage market and the financial crisis in Hungary (principal investigator, funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund) and shifting notions of the consumer in post-crisis financial consumer regulation in Switzerland, the UK and Hungary (individual grant, funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences).

Current PhD students:

Leonardo Conte

Cristina Paradiso

Robert Musil