Paola Mattei is Professor of  Public Policy and Political Science at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Italy. She is the Director of the Evidence-Based Policy and Research Action Hub (EPRA Hub) at the University of Milan.

Previously, she was Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and Governing Body Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.  She has been Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, Visiting Fellow at Sciences Po University, Paris,  and at the Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung (WZB), Berlin.

She has published Restructuring Welfare Organisations in Europe: From Democracy to Good Management?(Palgrave 2009); University Adaptation in Difficult Economic Times (Ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2014); Public Accountability and Health Care Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); and Secular Institutions, Islam and Education Policy. France and the U.S. in Comparative Perspective (with A. Aguilar, Palgrave, 2016). She has also published widely in high-impact international peer reviewed journals, such as Public Administration, West European Politics, International Review of Political Science, Oxford Review of Education, and others.

Professor Mattei’s research to date has investigated public management reforms in public organisations; public accountability mechanisms, and citizens’ public engagement policies; globalization and education policies (a new Handbook on Globalization and Education is forthcoming in 2023 with Oxford University Press). Underlying her research is the problematic relationship between accountability, democracy, markets and the contemporary reforms of public services.   Her new book Democratizing Science  is published in September 2023 by Bristol University Press.