I hold a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Entitled "Do Inclusive Societies Need Closed Borders?", my dissertation received an Honorable Mention for the 2022 Maria Ioannis Baganha Dissertation Award sponsored by the IMISCOE, Europe's largest interdisciplinary research network in migration studies.

Previously, I obtained my Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and my Master of Arts in World Society and Global Governance from the University of Lucerne. In addition, I hold a Master of Research in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute. To finish my PhD, I was also granted a doctoral fellowship at the Ethics, Law, and Politics Department at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany.

My research has appeared in the Journal of Common Market Studies, International Migration Review, Comparative Migration Studies, Global Policy, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Democratization, and European Political Science. For our article "Democratic Deficits in Europe",  Joachim Blatter, Andrea C. Blättler and I received the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS) 2017 Best Article Prize.

Over the years, ​I have contributed to various research endeavors and institutions. Among them are the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) Project at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, and the NCCR on the move, a large research cluster in migration studies in Switzerland.

After some years as a postdoc, I have transitioned into what is called "the third space" - in between pure administration and pure research and teaching, working a research manager at the Grants Office of the University of Lucerne. I also manage the study program LUMACSS (Lucerne Master in Computational Social Science), and I continue to teach and do research on the side.