Guglielmo Giuseppe Maria Meardi

Guglielmo Meardi is Professor of Sociology of Work and Economy in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence. After studying sociology and politics in Milan, Paris, Warsaw and Florence, he taught for twenty years at the University of Warwick, UK, where he was, between 2012 and 2019, 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 power resources, 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 author or editor of Trade Union Acticists, East and West (2000), Solidarnosc 20 anni dopo (with E. Jogałła, 2002), Social Failures of EU Enlargement (2012) and Economy and Society in Europe (with L Burroni and M Keune, 2012). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Industrial Relations.

5 most recent publications

(2021) Back to the familialist future: The rise of social policy for ruling Populist Radical Right Parties in Italy and Poland, West European Politics, with I Guardiancich  (doi:10.1080/01402382.2021.1916720)

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

(2020) Non-compliant small firms and the National Living Wage: The roots of informal responses to regulatory change, British Journal of Management 31, 856-871, with M Ram, P Edwards, T Jones and S Doldor 

(2019) Theoretical and empirical links between trade unions and democracy, Economic and Industrial Democracy 40:1, 3-19, with L Baccaro and C Benassi

(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 previous projects

1. (2020-24) Shipping Off Labour: Changing Staffing Strategies in Globalized Workplaces, with I Wagner (Research Council of Norway)
2. (2014-16) ‘Representation of the losers of the crisis’ (British Academy)
3. (2014-16) ‘Active inclusion and industrial relations from a multi-level governance perspective’, with L. Burroni (European Commission)
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