Monica Poletti graduated from the University of Milan and then did her Master of Research in Political Communication at the University of Amsterdam. She did her PhD (Political Sociology), on the determinants of social and political participation in Italy with a special focus on party membership, at the University of Milan, where she was supervised by Paolo Segatti – former president of the Italian National Election Studies (ITANES). During her PhD she spent time as a visiting fellow at the MZES (Mannheim Centrum for European Social Research) in Germany, and whilst there she was mentored by Hermann Schmitt (BES – British Election Study).

Since 2010 Monica has been a research fellow of the COST-Action ‘True European Voter‘ (TEV) project on the influence of context on electoral behaviour in European countries. After finishing her PhD she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Milan, doing research on voting behaviour, populism and euroscepticism, and spent time as a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science working with Ken Benoit (Methodology Dept), Sara Hobolt (European Institute) and Michael Bruter (Government Dept).

Since 2013 she has taught quantitative methods for the social sciences and political sociology at the LSE. Monica moved to Queen Mary University in 2015 to work on the ESRC Party Members Project (PMP). She is also co-editor of the LSE-based Euro Crisis in the Press blog.