Giovanna Mazzeo Ortolani


PhD fellow

Research group(s):
7. Social Protection
8. Population, Development and Labour Economics

Giovanna Mazzeo Ortolani is a PhD fellow on the GPAC2 Dual Career Training Program at UNU-MERIT. Her research interest is focused on the intersection of social protection, labour markets, and gender. More recently she has started to unfold her interest for food security.

She holds a M.Sc. in Economic and Social Sciences from Bocconi University (Milan, Italy), where she researched students’ outcomes conditional on their non-cognitive skills, and a B.Sc. in Economics from Fundação Getulio Vargas (São Paulo, Brazil), where she studied the rationality of market forecasts for inflation.

At the moment she works as an economist and policy analyst at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) on gender gaps in education, social protection, welfare state, and labour markets.

Since 2018 she has been working in the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. Over the years, she was involved in a variety of topics, ranging from the macroeconomic forecast for Member States to the analysis of social (protection) policies, having worked for DG EMPL (Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion) and DG ECFIN (Economics & Finance). Previously, she worked in a private macroeconomic consulting company in Brazil.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giovannamazzeoortolani

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ortolani




Selected publications by Giovanna Mazzeo Ortolani


Research reports
Mazzeo Ortolani, Giovanna , Aregawi G. Gebremariam & Federico Biagi, 2024, Old-age workers transition into retirement and risk of poverty, evidence from 25 European Union countries using SHARE data, More information
Hurley, John, Marta Fana, Dragoș Adăscăliței, Giovanna Mazzeo Ortolani, Irene Mandl, Eleonora Peruffo & Carlos Vacas-Soriano, 2021, What just happened? COVID-19 lockdowns and change in the labour market, Eurofound - Joint Research Centre report, More information


Conference contributions
Salazar, Leire, Carlos Gil Hernandez, Davide Villani, Guillem Vidal Lorda, Enrique Fernandez Macias, Giovanna Mazzeo Ortolani & Sergio Torrejon Perez, 2023, Social Classes in the Digital Age, 2022-2023 Seminar Series Highlights, More information


UNU-MERIT