I am Programme Director in Social Inequality and Assistant Professor of Sociology at The Department of Political and Social Sciences at The European University Institute.  I am also an external research affiliate at the Population Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University and Center for Research on Social Inequalities, Sciences Po.

Formerly, I was an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Sociology at The Center for Research in Economics and Statistics (CREST)-ENSAE Paris in 2023-2024, and an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Demography in The Department of Sociology and Criminology at The Pennsylvania State University in 2019-2023.

My research agenda focuses on the unequal consequences of the gender revolution on women’s work and family outcomes across class, race, and contexts. I apply quantitative methods to cross-national and longitudinal data to explore variation across countries and time. My work has been published in Demography, Social Forces, The Journal of Marriage and Family, Demographic Research, The European Sociological Review, and The Journal of Personal and Social Relationships.

Most recently, I was awarded an ERC starting grant – WeEqualize– on the intertwined implications of the gender revolution—including changing gender beliefs, rising labor market insecurity, and the increasing retreat from partnerships—in shaping social inequalities in work-family strategies among different-sex couples across 24 countries from the 1960s to nowadays. With my collaborators at Penn State, I am part of a large interdisciplinary NIH-funded R01 grant to study how structural racism shapes racial-ethnic life-course disparities among individuals with end-stage kidney disease.

I received a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from Pompeu Fabra University in 2016.  I completed an NICHD postdoctoral fellowship at the Population Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University. I also spent the last year of my Ph.D. as a visiting pre-doctoral scholar at the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland-College Park. I received a Work and Family Researchers Network Early Career Fellowship (2018)  as well Pompeu Fabra University’s Extraordinary Doctorate Award (2019).

Contact: lea.pessin (at) eui.eu //  Google Scholar  //   Twitter // Department Page