ACU researcher

Dr Andrea Giovannetti

Assistant Professor
Faculty of Law and Business

Areas of expertise: quantitative criminology; human networks; simulations; programming; data analytics; computational methods; social sciences

Phone: +612 9739 2884

Email: Andrea.giovannetti@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU North Sydney Campus

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: HDR Supervisor (Provisional)

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7685-5644

ORCID link: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7685-5644

I believe that reality is a set of interconnected entities: the properties and the complexity of such interconnections matter for understanding and impacting crucial social phenomena such as the diffusion of human behaviours.

In my work, I develop analytical models and apply high-power contemporary computational and statistical techniques to investigate and address complex real-life behavioural problems.

Examples of projects I am currently coordinating and working on include the analysis and the mitigation of gang violence in Greater London Area (about 9 million inhabitants) and the design of non-coercive policies to control the spread of radicalization in vulnerable populations of Victoria.

I welcome collaborations and partnerships with researchers and institutions on human-related big-data problems with a focus on the improvement of the wellbeing of societies.

At ACU, I am a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor in the U.S. system) in Economics and Quantitative Methods at the Faculty of Law and Business, based in Sydney. I am also co-director of the Tackling Hate Lab, at Deakin University.

Before joining ACU, I held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship (the second most competitive individual grant in the world) at the Institute of Criminology of the University of Cambridge, UK, where I retain a visiting position and I am an active member of the Violence Research Centre. In Cambridge, I co-instruct a course in analytics designed for police analysts from all over the world for the CCFEBP, led by Hon. Prof. L. Sherman.

I have active operative and research collaborations with the largest police force of Europe, London Metropolitan Police, and several U.K. organizations, including Merseyside and Cambridgeshire police forces.

I obtained my PhD in Economics in 2018 from the University of Southampton, UK. From 2018 to 2021 I worked as a research fellow at the Economics Department of University of Technology Sydney, where I received an award as best lecturer of the University with less than five years experience for a course in Behavioural Economics I redesigned, coordinated and lecturer between 2018 and 2021.

Website 

https://andrea-giovannetti.github.io/site/

Select publications

• For my publications and current projects, please visit my website!

Awards

• Countering Violent Extremism (Phase 2), Department of Home Affairs, 2025 (54,000 USD)

• Uncovering the link between online hate and offline violence, Deakin, 2025 (25,300 USD)

• Breaking networks of youth serious violence, ESRC, 2024 (team member) (147,070 USD)

• Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (eval. top 1%), 2020 (256,950 USD)

• Best Lecturer of the University, University of Technology Sydney, 2020 (2,513 USD)

• Research Grant, University of Cambridge, 2019 (2,751 USD)

• Economic and Social Research Council, 2014 (73,000 USD)

• Venini Award for Best MSc Dissertation, 2013 (30,000 USD)

Appointments and Affiliations

• Visiting Scholar (Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge)

• Associate Research Fellow (Darwin College, University of Cambridge)

• Member of CAPP, Centre for Public Policy Analysis (University of Modena)