Monica Massari is Associate Professor of sociology in the Department of Political Science of the Federico II University of Naples, where she also coordinates the Masters program in Analysis of organised criminal phenomena and strategies for social reuse of confiscated goods, and is a member of the academic committee for the Masters program in Immigration and integration policies.

Monica has been elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Sociological Association-ESA (2015-2017 and 2017-2019) and is a member of the board of the ESA’s “Women and Gender Studies” Research Network (as of 2017). After studying at length the complex phenomena involved in criminality and illicit markets, acting as both a researcher and a consultant for international bodies, over the last fifteen years she has dedicated herself above all to studying migratory phenomena, giving particular attention to gender dynamics, the processes through which otherness is socially constructed, cultural and religious differences and the new forms of racism and discrimination in Europe.

Her most recent publications in English on these topics include: Reconsidering Transnational Organized Crime in the Shadow of Globalization: the Case of Human Smuggling across the Mediterranean (Hart Publishing, 2017) and At the Edge of Europe: the Phenomenon of Irregular Migration from Libya to Italy (Palgrave Pivot, 2015). She is currently co-editing with Vittorio Martone the book Mafia Violence. Political, Symbolic, and Economic Forms of Violence in the Camorra Clans (Routledge, London, 2018 forthcoming) and with Roswitha Breckner the international monographic issue on “Biography and Society” for Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, the main Italian sociological journal (1, 2019, forthcoming).