Paola Villano (Sondrio, 5 December 1968) is a Full Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Bologna, Italy, and Rector's Delegate on Working Welbeing.
Graduated Magna cum Laude in Education at the University of Bologna (1991), she received her Ph.D. in Psychology in 1996 and a post-doc fellowship at the University of Bologna in 1999. She was a researcher in Social Psychology from 2000 to 2004.
As professor, she has been a visiting academic at the Dep. de Psicologia Social e do Desenvolvimiento, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo [https://www.researchgate.net/institution/Universidade_Federal_do_Espirito_Santo] (Vitoria, Brasil) Barcelona (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Amsterdam, Harvard, Tufts University (USA) and Brown University (Rhode Island).
She is a A member of the scientific board and co-founder of "Centro Studi di Genere e Educazione" ("Gender Studies and Education") at the Dept. of Education, University of Bologna.
Her primary research interests include social exclusion and the related psychological processes, stereotypes and prejudices; national and international migration; and antisemitism. She also focuses on political and civic engagement and discourse analysis.
In addition, she has written on social exclusion, prejudice (toward migrants, women, Roma people), culture and mediation, political participation of youth and migrants in Italy and UK.
She has worked on the fields related to prejudices and migration, in particular on political participation of migrants in Italy and discourse analysis of Italian and regional laws (grant received from the European Commission - 7th Framework Program - Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation 2009-2011), and psychological processes that underline moral judgement.
In partnership with the University of Pristina, Save the Children (International Programs) and the Ministry of Education of Kosovo University, in the 2013 she has developed the project “Early Childhood Care and Development Situation Analysis” in Kosovo, a research with teachers, children, parents and political institutions in the fields of social exclusion, social and cultural factors that influences the children condition in this country. In 2017 she received an academic grant from University of Bologna (Fibra) to organize a research team in on aggressive and violent behaviors in adolescence.
She is currently member of the Unibo research unit - PRIN Bando 2020 Project Prot. 2020CJL288 "INSPIRE: INCLUSION STRATEGIES THROUGH WORK PARTICIPATION FOR ORGANISATIONAL WELL-BEING and a member of the research unit of the Erasmus + 2018 Project KA2 - FORTH - Formation of teachers in Challenged Areas in the Philippines (duration: 36 months).
2024 – Member of the Unibo reasearch Unit - Horizon SINCRONY (InterSectIonal iNClusion in delibeRation and participatiON with Youth) – Dipartimento di Psicologia e Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione. https://magazine.unibo.it/archivio/2024/01/15/come-favorire-l2019inclusione-e-la-partecipazione-politica-delle-persone-giovani
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS: Paola Villano authored or co-authored more than 58 presentations at national and international meetings and conferences and several publications.
