David Benassi is Full Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy), where he directed the Master’s program in Planning of Social Policies (2015–2021). He received his PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Brescia (Italy) in 1999 and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Padua (Italy). From 1999 to 2001, he served as a junior researcher at the National Commission on Poverty of the Italian Government.
In recent years, he has had teaching and research experiences in Australia (Griffith University, Brisbane, 2008), Greece (University of Crete, 2010), Spain (University of Barcelona, 2013), Turkey (Middle East Technical University, Ankara, 2022 and 2025), China (East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 2024), and Brazil (University of São Paulo, 2025).
His main research interests include the study of inequality and poverty, the welfare state, and social policies. In recent years, he has focused primarily on the effects of social inequality on health, adopting an approach based on microdata, both qualitative and quantitative.