Francesco Billari is Professor of Demography at Bocconi University in Milan, where he became Rector in November 2022 after having held the role of Dean of the Faculty. He has been a lecturer at the University of Oxford (Department of Sociology, where he was also Head of Department) and Nuffield College (where he was a Professorial Fellow), and at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Research Director).

His main research interests are population change and its implications, fertility and family, transition to adulthood, life cycle analysis, population forecasting, digitalization and demography, and comparative surveys. His work has been published in leading scientific journals on demography, economics, epidemiology and public health, geography, sociology and statistics. He has worked on numerous international projects and has been PI of a European Research Council Advanced Grant.

He was president and general secretary/treasurer of the European Association for Population Studies and received the Clogg Award from the Population Association of America in 2012. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy and an Affiliate of the Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania.