Lucio Baccaro, a citizen of both Italy and Switzerland, was born and raised in Italy and began his scholarly career with a degree in philosophy from the University of Rome. He went on to study business administration and political science with stays at top academic locations. He was awarded a doctorate in labor law and industrial relations from the University of Pavia in Italy in 1997 and a PhD in management and political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999. Following further research stays at MIT and the International Labour Organization (ILO), he was appointed in 2009 to a professorship in sociology at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. From 2009 to 2020, he was Full Professor of Macrosociology at the Institute of Sociology and, since 2016, also Deputy Dean for Research at the University of Geneva. In 2017, the Max Planck Society appointed him as Scientific Member and Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.