I am a researcher in the field of cultural evolution. My work is at the interface of psychology, anthropology, and sociology. I am interested in particular to contemporary cultural phenomena, and I use a naturalistic, quantitative, and evolutionary approach with different methodologies, especially individual-based models and quantitative analysis of large-scale cultural data. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, and member of the C2S2 - Centre for Computational Social Science and Human Dynamics.
My last book (published in March 2025) is Tecnopanico (il Mulino, in Italian).
Earlier, I wrote a book for Oxford University Press: Cultural evolution in the digital age, and an open access manual: Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R (a physical version is available with Routeldge). I also curate a free substack newsletter (in Italian), with links to material about cultural evolution and digital technologies: Cinque link a settimana.
Interests
- Cultural evolution
- Sociology of culture
- Cultural analytics
- Cognitive anthropology
- Individual-based modelling
- Computational social science
- Digital media
