Alessandra is Project Leader at the Young Foundation.

Alessandra first joined Demos as an associate in 2003 when she co-authored the pamphlet 'People Flow: Managing migration in a new European Commonwealth' with Tom Bentley and Theo Veenkamp. She returned to Demos in June 2007 as new Head of Research.

Alessandra is particularly interested in people movement and the social and political challenges that this poses for community relations, integration and feelings of belonging.

Before joining Demos, Alessandra was research associate at the Young Foundation - a centre for social innovation based in East London - from its set up in Spring 2005. There, Alessandra led on research focussing on far right extremism in Britain; belonging; positional goods; unmet rural needs in Britain and Ireland and Mapping Britain's unmet needs. She also co-edited with Geoff Mulgan the book 'Porcupines in Winter: the pleasures and pains of living together in modern Britain'.

Before April 2005, Alessandra was research fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies of the University of Birmingham where she worked on an ESRC funded project on terrorism and migration. Alessandra has conducted social and ethnographic research in places as diverse as Barking and Dagenham, the West Indies and the European Commission; has been managing editor of the journal The Cambridge Review of International Affairs and visiting scholar at the Universite' Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

Alessandra is a fellow of the Young Foundation; an associate of Green Engage Communications and member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care. Alessandra holds a first class honours degree in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Durham, an MPhil in Development studies and a PhD in international relations from the University of Cambridge.