Main research interests

Comparative social stratification; Sociology of education; Education systems; Sociology of work and organizations; Employers' hiring behaviour; Social networks and social capital; Economic sociology. 

Academic Background

Valentina is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam. She is a member of the Programme Group Inequalities, Institutions and Life Courses.

Her research is part of the project "Educational systems and four central functions of education", funded by the Dutch organization for scientific research (NWO). Three functions of the education system - skill maximization, labour market allocation and socialization into active citizenship – are explored and countries are ranked according to a wide range of indicators. For all three functions, possible trade-offs between efficiency and equality are explored.

Valentina is also a Fellow of the College for Interdisciplinary Education Research at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) in Berlin.

In 2013, she completed her doctoral studies at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR), under the supervision of Prof. Herman van de Werfhorst and dr. Klarita Gërxhani. She was also PhD Representative from January 2010 to January 2012. Her dissertation is a comparison of employers' hiring behaviour in three countries: Italy, England and the Netherlands. She studied how employers evaluate the educational pedigree of job applicants within the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) sector. The project is part of a bigger research, subsidized by a VIDI grant from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). In 2012, as part of her doctoral training, Valentina was a visiting student at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.

Before starting her PhD studies, Valentina graduated cum laude at the University of Amsterdam from the Master's Programme Comparative Labour and Organisation Studies. She was also a research assistant at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS), where she collaborated to the 2008 Industrial Relations in Europe report, issued by the European Commission. On that occasion, she compared cross-nationally education systems and patterns of entry into the labour market of European youth. For the same project, she also focused on policies of lifelong learning and training at the workplace. Her Master's thesis dealt with the effect of training on workers' perceptions of job security in different institutional contexts, characterized by varying degrees of employment protection legislation.

Valentina is also affiliated to AMCIS (Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies), RC28 (Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility), ECSR (European Consortium for Sociological Research). and EQUALSOC (Economic Change, Quality of Life, and Social Cohesion).

Valentina has been a member of the editorial board of Amsterdam Social Science and is now occasional reviewer for Acta Sociologica.

• ILL Programme Group

• AMCIS - Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies

• CIDER - College for Interdisciplinary Education Research

• EQUALSOC

• AmsterdamSocialScience

• AIAS

• Industrial Relations in Europe 2008 (pdf)

A vignette study for eliciting employers' hiring preferences

Project title:
Why education matters to employers: a vignette study in Italy, England and the Netherlands.
Supervised by: Prof. Herman van de Werfhorst and dr. Klarita Gërxhani.

This dissertation presents a comparative study of school-to-work transitions in Italy, England and the Netherlands, with a focus on why education matters to employers during the hiring process. Three possible explanations are discussed: education is a provider of productivity-enhancing skills; education is a signal of expected trainability; education is a legitimized closure practice. These theories are related to various features of educational attainment: level of education, eld of study, grades, study duration, credentials, internships. Through a web-based vignette study, 131 employers took part in a simulation of a hiring process. Findings show that Dutch employers are more likely to reward education because it provides job-specic skills. In the Netherlands, educational credentials serve as a closure practice within a labour market strongly segmented by qualications. Employers in England expect new hires to learn skills on the job and rely on grades to identify the applicants with the lower training costs. Results are less straightforward in Italy, where employers seem to simultaneously reward skills and trainability; closure, by degrees or by networks, is nearly absent. The book also proposes a theoretical model that relates organizational factors (e.g. recruitment practices, training investment and job type) to a continuum between open and closed employment relationships. Results indicate that while moving from open to closed relationships, employers are less likely to reward job-specic skills and more likely to associate education with expected trainability.

This project was part of a bigger research, subsidized by a VIDI grant from the Netherlands' Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Other researchers involved in the project were: dr. Thijs Bol, Hafid Ballafkih and dr. Ruya Kocer.

• NWO Project page

• Prof. Herman van de Werfhorst personal page

• Dr. Klarita Gërxhani personal page

• Dr. Thijs Bol personal page

Teaching activities at the Graduate School of Social Sciences

2013-2014

Course on Labour Market Orientation. Supervisor of a group of Master's theses for the track Comparative Organisations and LabourStudies. 

2010-2011 and 2011-2012
Academic Adviser for the Master's Programme Comparative Organisations and LabourStudies.
Fall 2011
Teaching assistant for the course Institutions and Inequalities , coordinated by Klarita Gerxhani and targeted to Research Master's students.
Fall 2010 and Fall 2011
Teaching Assistant for the course States, Markets and Institutions in Comparative Perspective , elective course for Master's students. The course was lectured by dr. Johan De Deken.
Fall 2009
Teaching Assistant for the course Education and Skills on Labour Markets: Comparative Perspectives, elective course for Master's students. The course was lectured by Prof. Herman van de Werfhorst.

• COLS Master's Programme

Organization workshops

April 2010
Organizer of Short Intensive Course for PhD candidates, together with Paul van Hooft.
The course was entitled Decision-making under information uncertainty: from perception to action and was lectured by Adrian de Groot Ruiz, dr. Michel Handgraaf and dr.Klarita Gërxhani.

Training

 Various courses on: Advanced multivariate analysis; Multilevel models, fixed and random effects; Discrete choice models; Vignette studies: the factorial survey approach; Longitudinal data analysis; Causality: propensity-score matching, difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity designs.

Selected Conference Presentations

with Mark Levels. "Job search for the vocationally qualified: evidence from EU-LFS". Paper presented at the Transitions in Youth Annual Workshop, Berlin - September 2013.

with Klarita Gërxhani. "Do recruitment channels matter for employers' hiring behaviour? Evidence from England". Poster presented at the EQUALSOC/ECSR conference in Stockholm - September 2012.

with Herman van de Werfhorst. "Hiring decisions in Italy and the Netherlands: a vignette study of why education matters to employers". Paper presented at the 20th Transitions in Youth Annual Workshop, Nijmegen - September 2012.

with Herman van de Werfhorst. "Education and employers' hiring behaviour in Italy and the Netherlands: results from a vignette study" . Paper presented at the 20-year conference of the European Consortium for Sociological Research, Dublin - December 2011.

with Herman van de Werfhorst. "Educational credentials as hiring screens: results from a vignette study in the Italian IT sector" . Paper presented at the summer meeting of the International Sociological Association RC28, Iowa City - August 2011.

• Geen nevenwerkzaamheden