Guglielmo Giuseppe Maria Meardi

Guglielmo Meardi is Professor of Sociology of Work and Economy and Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. After studying sociology and politics in Milan, Paris, Warsaw and Florence (EUI), he taught for twenty years at the University of Warwick, UK, where he was Professor of Industrial Relations and Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit. His research is on the processes of internationalisation of the world of work, including relocation of production, multinational corporations as employers, transnational labour movements, multi-level governance, and labour migration, and combines institutional and social movement theories. He has been a Visiting Fellow of the Polish, Hungarian and Slovenian Academies of Sciences, and of Universities in Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Industrial Relations.

5 recent publications

(2025) Explaining political turnarounds on minimum wages: A comparison of UK, Germany and Italy, Socio-Economic Review ( https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwae082 ), with F Seghezzi

(2022) Back to the familialist future: The rise of social policy for ruling Populist Radical Right Parties in Italy and Poland, West European Politics 45:1, 129-153, with I Guardiancich 

(2022) Crisis corporatism 2.0? The role of social dialogue in the pandemic crisis in Europe, Transfer,28:1, 83-100, with A Tassinari

(2021) Trade unions and precariat in Europe: Representative claims, European Journal of Industrial Relations 27:1, 41-58, with M Simms and D Adam

(2018) Economic integration and state responses: Change in European industrial relations since Maastricht, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 56:3, 631-655 (LERA's James Scoville prize for best international-comparative labor paper of 2018)

5 relevant projects

1. (2023-25) The Social and Environmental Sustainability of the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Prin)
2. (2020-24) Shipping Off Labour: Changing Staffing Strategies in Globalized Workplaces, with I. Wagner (Research Council of Norway)
3. (2014-16) ‘Representation of the losers of the crisis’ (British Academy)
4. (2016-17) ‘Scenarios for regulating labour migration after Brexit’ (ESRC)
5. (2017) ‘Non-compliance with the National Minimum Wage’, with M. Ram and P. Edwards (Low Pay Commission)

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Comparative and international labour movements
• Labour migration: regulation and mobilisation
• Multinational corporations as employers, especially in central and Eastern Europe