COSTARELLI IGOR SEBASTIAN

Igor Costarelli is a research fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He holds the national qualification for Associate Professor in the academic field of Sociology of Economic, Labor, Environmental, and Territorial Processes.

His research activity mainly focuses on housing studies, exploring the social implications of housing policies at various territorial scales. He has conducted comparative studies on housing welfare systems in Italy and Europe, innovative models for social housing management, and emerging forms of collective housing. In the Milanese context, he has investigated patterns of residential segregation, social mix policies, and the consequences of urban transformations on the housing pathways of students and young workers.

His work has been published in leading journals in the field, including Housing Studies; Housing, Theory and Society; Journal of Housing and the Built Environment; Cities; and Journal of Urban Affairs. He is also the author of the book "Housing Policies and Young Generations. The Case of Milan" (FrancoAngeli, 2023).

He earned a PhD in Urban Studies (URBEUR) at the University of Milano-Bicocca in joint supervision with Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), where he served as a guest researcher from 2017 to 2020. Previously, he was a visiting researcher at LAB’URBA at the University of Paris Est Créteil.

Alongside teaching urban sociology in master's programs at the University of Milano-Bicocca and the Polytechnic University of Milan, he has lectured in doctoral programs, professional training courses, and provided consultancy for various international organizations (Habitat for Humanity International, Council of Europe, EACEA European Commission).

In 2022, he was elected member of the Coordination Committee of the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR), where he founded and currently coordinates the working group Housing and Young People.

He is a member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Housing Studies (Taylor & Francis), and serves as a reviewer for several other academic journals, including Urban Studies; International Journal of Housing Policy; Cities; Journal of Housing and the Built Environment; City, Culture and Society, as well as research funding bodies.

As Co-Principal Investigator, he coordinates the multidisciplinary project Livesound, funded by the Bicocca Starting Grants 2023 program. The project aims to test an innovative approach to studying noise pollution in urban contexts by integrating objective acoustic metrics and subjective individual perceptions.

He is also a member of the C.A.S.A. Research and Action Center on Student Housing at the University of Milano-Bicocca, dedicated to studying the housing conditions and needs of the student population.