Andrey Felipe Sgorla, Italian-Brazilian, is an Assistant Professor of 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 theses examined transformations in work through ethnographic studies of the craft beer sector in Brazil, Italy, Spain, and Portugal — investigating how workers construct meaningful professional trajectories in post-industrial economies outside conventional institutional frameworks.
This empirical work constitutes the foundation of his current research interests: professional life under conditions of radical uncertainty, in which vocational futures depend on narrative, conventional, and relational mechanisms that enable the imagination of sustainable professional trajectories — and whose dissolution leaves available resources without direction.
Three interconnected research lines develop this argument:
Work, Radical Uncertainty, and Vocational Imagination explores how workers construct and renew expectations of professional futures under conditions of radical uncertainty, proposing socioeducational guidance as permanent infrastructure — rather than episodic crisis intervention — to sustain these processes across working lives.
Generative Guidance, Professional Identity, and Pedagogy of Transitions develops pedagogical frameworks for guidance practice capable of sustaining non-linear professional trajectories. It connects the Italian tradition of lifelong generative guidance with international scholarship on sustainable careers, building an approach that supports the narrative and relational construction of meaningful professional identities beyond conventional institutional pathways.
Epistemic Justice, Biographical Recognition, and Inclusive Transitions examines the social and institutional conditions that shape unequal access to imagined professional futures. It argues that guidance systems reproduce inequality when they lack the conceptual tools to recognise non-dominant biographical trajectories as legitimate vocational resources, and develops an intercultural guidance model grounded in biographical recognition and career equity.
His experience includes postdoctoral fellowships at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, in collaboration with the National Center for Future Biodiversity (NBFC), and at the University of Gastronomic Sciences. He has been a visiting researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon (Portugal), and at Sheffield Hallam University (UK), as well as a visiting professor in the doctoral programs in Sociology at the Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil) and in Law, Economics, and Commerce at the University of Vic (Spain).