Luca Verzichelli (1964) graduated in political science (1988 - Siena) and became PhD in Political Science in 1995 in Firenze. He studied at Heidelberg (1989 - Erasmus scholarship), at University of Essex (1991 - 24th Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis), at Columbia University, New York (1992-1993). Since 2001 he has taught at the University of Siena. He served on the editorial staff of the magazines "Italian Political Science Review", "Polis, Italian Journal of Public Policy and European Political Science". From 2001 to 2004 he was secretary of the Italian Society of Political Science and its directors the SISP appointed him Director of the "Italian Political Science Review" for the period 2010-2012.

His latest book, "Vivere di politica in Italia" (Il Mulino, 2010) is proposed to reconstruct the transformation of political professionalism in Italy and make some simple proposal that aimed at giving new credibility to the professionals of politics and a new importance to a political class with a very low reputation.