Project Members

Principal Investigator
 

Nicoletta Balbo Nicoletta Balbo is the Principal Investigator of the FRALIFE project and Associate Professor of Sociology at the Social and Political Sciences Department, Bocconi University.  She is also Research Fellow at the DONDENA Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy. Her research interests focus on sociology of the family, life course, fertility decision-making, health behaviors and disability. Her research is therefore at the intersection between sociology, demography and public health. Nicoletta has published in leading demographic and sociological journals, such as Demography and American Sociological Review.

Research Team

Lara Bister Lara Bister is a post-doctoral research fellow in the ERC-project FRAILIFE, which investigates the effects of child disability on family members across various domains. 
Lara’s research interests lie at the intersection of Sociology, Social Demography and Public health, focusing on contextual and family-level stressors and their effects on health and the life course. She specialises in quantitative statistical analysis of large survey and register data. Lara studied Sociology and Demography at the University of Cologne, Utrecht University, University College Dublin, University of Groningen and Autonomous University of Barcelona, and did her Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Groningen and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (defence in June 2024). She is an affiliated researcher at the Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health (MaxHel) and a member of the Working Group 'Child and Adolescent Development' of the European Association of Population Studies.

Alice Dominici Alice Dominici joined the FRAILIFE team in September 2023 as a full-time postdoctoral researcher. She is completing her PhD in Economics at the European University Institute: her thesis applies both observational and experimental causal inference methods to themes in Health and Historical Political Economics. Her previous work on health themes focus on the determinants of vaccine hesitancy, and tests informational nudges for vaccination campaigns in both field and survey-based experiments. For these, Alice has collaborated with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the Public Health Agency of Sweden, and the Regional Health Authority in Tuscany, Italy.

Elena Neri Elena Neri joined the FRAILIFE team in September 2023 as a full-time predoctoral researcher. She is completing her MSc in Economics and Social Sciences at Bocconi University: her thesis investigates the effects of child disability on mothers’ social participation and siblings’ mental health in the UK. She completed her BSc in International Politics and Government also at Bocconi University: her undergraduate thesis evaluates Italian policy efforts promoting labour market integration for adults with autism spectrum disorder. She is currently a visiting researcher at the Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health working with Finnish register data.

Silvia Palmaccio joined the FRAILIFE team in October 2024 as a full-time predoctoral researcher.