Andrey Felipe Sgorla, Italian-Brazilian, is a researcher in Didactics and Educational Research in the Department of Social, Political, and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Siena. He holds a PhD in Social Sciences (Brazil) and a PhD in Learning and Innovation in Social and Work Contexts (Italy).
His doctoral research examined career transitions into emerging craft professions through two complementary studies: the first investigated how craft producers construct narratives of legitimacy and professional recognition, revealing the role of biographical narration, communities of practice and social capital in the formation of non-linear career trajectories; the second shifted the question from market construction to the construction of the professional subject, analysing how situated learning, tacit knowledge and territorial networks sustain professional trajectories and entrepreneurship in artisanal work.
His current research investigates how individuals and institutions construct, sustain, and renew professional futures under conditions of uncertainty, and how guidance systems and educational structures mediate these processes. The programme is structured around three interconnected lines of research: (1) vocational imagination and career transitions, investigating how individuals construct and sustain professional futures through occupational learning, communities of practice and work-based learning; (2) lifelong guidance, pedagogy and the institutional mediation of transitions, examining how guidance services, academic tutoring and support structures enable or constrain the construction of professional futures; and (3) inclusive transitions, recognition and epistemic justice, exploring how social and institutional inequalities shape access to learning, professional recognition and vocational opportunity in multicultural and rapidly changing contexts. His research is situated at the intersection of career guidance, the study of educational and occupational transitions, and lifelong learning, with particular attention to populations whose biographies are unequally recognised by the institutions they navigate.
His experience includes postdoctoral research appointments at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, in collaboration with the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC), and at the University of Gastronomic Sciences. He has conducted research stays at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, and at Sheffield Hallam University. In addition, he has served as a visiting professor in doctoral programs in Sociology at the Federal University of Pelotas, in Law, Economics and Commerce at the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia, and in Education at the University of Caxias do Sul.