Chiara Focacci is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and a William Golding Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Her research examines the workplace, reskilling, and technological change, with a methodological focus on mixed methods—particularly experimental designs.

She has held research positions at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, the Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute, the Law & Economics Centre at Erasmus University Rotterdam, ETH Zürich, and LENTIC at HEC Liège. Across these roles, she has studied how workers navigate digitalisation, labour market transitions, and changing skill demands, contributing to projects on employment, innovation policy, and the green and digital economy.

Chiara completed a joint PhD in Economics and Law (summa cum laude) at the Universities of Bologna, Rotterdam, and Hamburg. Her dissertation analysed the socioeconomic and historical dimensions of reskilling programmes and the construction of labour market identities.

At Oxford, she leads fieldwork for the EPICS project, using experimental and ethnographic methods to understand how older adults engage with technology and mobilise social capital. Her recent work studies technology engagement in later life, the behavioural dynamics behind participation in retraining, and the sociomaterial impact of digitalisation in workplaces.

Personal website & all publications available here. 

Selected publications:

Carbonara, E., Focacci, C. N. & Santarelli, E. (2024). Mitigating the Labor Displacing Effects of Automation through a Robot Tax: Evidence from a Survey Experiment. Economics of Innovation & New Technology, 33. 

Focacci, C. N., Perez, C. (2022). The Importance of Education and Training Policies in Supporting Technological Revolutions: A Comparative and Historical Analysis of UK, US, Germany, and Sweden (1830–1970). Technology in Society, 70.

Focacci, C. N. (2021). Technological Unemployment, Robotisation, and Green Deal: A Story of Unstable Spillovers in China and South Korea (2008–2018). Technology in Society, 64.