Letizia Mencarini graduated from University of Florence in 1999, where she worked with Massimo Livi Bacci. She is now Associate Professor at Bocconi University, and fellow of the DONDENA centre. A member of the IUSSP since 1998, she is among the experts of Population Europe and chair of the IUSSP world panel on subjective wellbeing and life course. She is on the editorial board of NEODEMOS.it and NIUSSP.org. She has taught at Bocconi, Science Po and the EUI and worked as consultant for Unicef, Eurofound, European Commission and Qatar National Research Fund.
Her research interests include demography of both developing and developed countries. Starting from her PhD (a demographic analysis of South Africa), her publications now include studies on fertility, poverty, and life course analysis with a special focus on wellbeing,  She is the PI of the European Research Council project entitled Subjective Wellbeing and Fertility  (http://swellfer.wordpress.com/).