Delia S. Baldassarri is Julius Silver, Roslyn S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Professor of Sociology at New York University, and holds courtesy appointments in the Wilf Family Department of Politics and in the Management and Organizations Department at the Stern School of Business. She is a senior researcher at Bocconi University and holds a BA and a PhD from the University of Trento, Italy, and a PhD in sociology from Columbia University.
Baldassarri works in the fields of economic and political sociology, social networks, and analytical sociology. Her current research includes the study of solidarity and cooperation in complex societies, focusing on how differentiation and market integration affects generalized prosociality, and a book project, “Party Misfits,” that investigates the demographic and social network bases of U.S. political partisanship.
She has received several career awards, including the Freeman Award for distinguished scholarship in social networks, the Raymond Boudon Award for early career achievement, the Hans L. Zetterberg Prize in Sociology, and several disciplinary awards, including a book award for The Simple Art of Voting: The Cognitive Shortcuts of Italian Voters.
Baldassarri is a fellow of the European Academy of Sociology, and has received support from the National Science Foundation, the European Research Council, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Complementing narratives of a fractured U.S., her project, “Party Misfits: The Social Bases of Partisanship in an Era of Polarized Politics,” will focus on the 50 percent of citizens that do not sort easily into Republican or Democratic camps. Baldassarri will examine the social bases of partisanship, exploring whether partisan divisions map into sociodemographic cleavages, how cross-pressured and moderate voters handle conflicting ideologies, and the role of social networks in mitigating partisan hostility. Moreover, investigating how citizens navigate political tensions reveals the growing gap between voters and political elites.
May 2024
