Andrey Felipe Sgorla, Italian-Brazilian, is a researcher in Didactics and Educational Research at the Department of Social, Political, and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena. His research investigates why some professional futures become possible while others remain structurally inaccessible — even when people have the motivation, the skills, and the willingness to learn. He develops theory to explain how professional futures are imagined, learned, recognised, and sustained — and why these processes are shaped by institutions, workplaces, and technologies in ways that are often invisible.
Drawing on two doctoral theses in Social Sciences (Brazil) and Learning and Innovation in Social and Work Contexts (Italy), and on comparative ethnographic research on neo-artisanal careers conducted across Brazil, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, his research is organised around three interconnected lines that build an interdisciplinary framework across the sociology of work and professions, the sociology of expectations and futures, education, and career studies and professional transitions.
The first, Learning Ecologies and Professional Becoming, reconceptualises professional development as an ecological process: knowledge, identity, and value are co-produced through interactions among people, materials, technologies, and places — within and beyond formal educational institutions. The second, Vocational Imagination and Professional Futures, the programme's theoretical core, advances original concepts — the Vocational Imagination Model, fictional robustness, fictional collapse, and Authenticity Capital — to explain how individuals sustain professional commitments under uncertainty and how meaningful trajectories become institutionally invisible. The third, Career Guidance, Institutional Recognition, and Inclusion, analyses how educational and guidance systems distribute — or obstruct — access to credible professional futures, with particular attention to gender, migration background, and class. Across all three lines, he examines how artificial intelligence, digitalisation, and ecological transition are reconfiguring expertise, professional recognition, and the future of work.
He has held postdoctoral appointments at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies and the University of Gastronomic Sciences, and visiting positions at universities in Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. His books include Fermented Craftsmanship in the Bottle: Practices of Entrepreneurship Linked to Passion, Work and Territory (Ethics Press, 2024) and Fazer Cerveja: Mercado, Autenticidade e Trabalho Artesanal no Brasil (Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, 2026).