Mario Cardano

Biography

I am a full professor on Qualitative Methods for Social Research and Sociology of Health at the Department of Cultures Politics and Society (university of Turin), where I teach at the undergraduate, graduate and PhD courses. I am the director of the Qualitative Research Lab based in the same department. My studies and research have tackled two interwoven topics: the relationship between health and society and the methods and epistemologies of qualitative research. Along the first research path, I studied the issue of health inequalities, being involved in a series of international research carried out in multidisciplinary teams, composed both of epidemiologists and sociologists. More recently, I focused my study on mental health, through the study of illness narratives and the ethnographic study of coercion in mental health settings. In the second research path, I developed a reflection aimed to define and defend the soundness of qualitative research. In this direction, I proposed a specific frame for qualitative research in the theory of argumentation, which plays, in qualitative research the same role played by the theory of probability in quantitative research. The main results of this study have been convened in the recent book, published by Routledge, Defending Qualitative Research (March 2020). I published many books and essays in the two areas mentioned above: Qualitative methodology and Sociology of health. I am member of the board of one of the most relevant Italian journal, "Rassegna Italiana di Sociology", whose I was the director for the triennium 2010-2012, and, more recently, he joined the board of the Brazilian journal “Journal of Nursing and Health”, and that of “Studies in Social Wellbeing. An Open Access Journal”, in Malta. I have been referee for many national and international journals among which: Social Sciences & Medicine; health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine; Journal of Happiness Studies; Nursing Management; International Review of Sociology; Substance Use and Misuse; Quality and Quantity; Visual Anthropology; Social Compass; Children and Youth Services Review; Health and Place; Mental Health; Religion & Culture; Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia; Polis; Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale; Sociologica; Salute e Società; Quaderni di Sociologia, Sociologia del Diritto; Autonomie locali e servizi sociali; Sociologia Italiana – AIS Journal of Sociology.  I was the P.I. of two national projects, on biographical transactions and, recently on the involuntary treatment and mechanical restraints in acute psychiatric wards in the North of Italy.
I have been visiting research fellow at Labour Study Department of McMaster University of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1997; Visiting professor at the Department of Sociology of the Goldsmiths College in London in 2007; at the Nursing Department of the universities of Pelotas, Ribeirão Preto and Porto Alegre (all in Brazil), in September 2017 and in September 2019.
In my scarce free time, I like biking, walking with my old dog Pippo, cooking (I give the best of myself in the brasato al Barolo) and, last but not least, dancing with my wife in an Occitan group of folk dancers.

Education

PhD in Sociology and Social Research - Univ. of Trento 1992

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Qualitative methodology
Sociology of mental health

Personal Interests

Biking, walking with my old dog Pippo, cooking, dancing Occitan dances.

Websites

• Academia.edu

• Google Scholar Citation

Books

News

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