Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Gianpaolo Baiocchi is associate professor of individualized studies and sociology at New York University, and director of the Urban Democracy Lab.

He is a sociologist and an ethnographer interested in questions of politics and culture, critical social theory, and cities. He has written about and continues to research instances of actually existing civic life both in his native Brazil and in the US. His work has appeared in specialist and general-audience publications from The American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology to The Boston Review. His most recent ethnographic research, just published as The Civic Imagination (co-authored with Elizabeth Bennett, Alissa Cordner, Stephanie Savell, and Peter Klein) examines the contours and limits of the democratic conversation in the US today.

His recent research, with Ernesto Ganuza, deals with the global travel and translation of blueprints of urban participation.