New PhD student: Laura Giorio

September 2026.

UPHG has two new PhD students starting in 2026. We will present them here and you can also find links to their faculty webpages here. First out is Laura Giorio!

Laura has an academic background in political science, international relations, and emerging security threats. She has previously worked with research on research and access to higher education. She has joined the Uppsala Patent History Group with a doctoral project investigating the social structure of Swedish innovation during the industrialization period. She aims to map the social network of inventor engineers in Sweden during the period linking historical patent data with class rosters and yearbooks from Sweden’s main technical institutions of the time.

Her main supervisor is Prof. Fredrik Tell and her co-supervisors are Dr. David Andersson and Associate Prof. Matti La Mela. Her doctoral project is part of the research project "Social capital and innovation: How did personal ties and social networks among engineers influence inventive activity during Sweden’s industrialization, 1830-1936?" funded by Handelsbankens research foundations.