Dr Marco Pino

Pronouns: He/him
  • School Athena Swan Co-Chair
  • Senior Lecturer in Communication and Social Interaction

Marco is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, and his expertise is in the fields of communication and social interaction.

Marco's research explores how people engage in delicate activities in face-to-face interaction and how they manage difficult episodes of communication. Marco’s research has addressed several topics in social interaction research including complaining, conflict, and the sharing of personal experiences. His research contributes to understandings of how people communicate, and it also has practical implications for improving communication in health and social care services.

Marco obtained his PhD in Education at the University of Verona with a dissertation on communication between staff and clients within Therapeutic Communities – rehabilitation programmes for people managing mental health problems and/or drug addiction. He carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Verona and at the University of Nottingham in two main areas: dyslexia and communication in end-of-life care.

Marco uses conversation analysis to explore how people interact in a variety of settings: support groups, healthcare consultations, and every day informal interactions. Marco studies how people talk about sensitive matters such as violations of social norms and expectations; and delicate topics such as someone’s thoughts and feelings about mortality. How do people negotiate what is a delicate matter in social interaction? What do they accomplish by constructing an event as atypical or out of the ordinary (or vice versa as ordinary and normal)? What does this tell us about how people shape their social worlds in everyday interaction? These are some of the questions Marco addresses in his research.

Some of Marco's current lines of work are: practices that promote compassionate conversations in end-of-life care; ways of facilitating bereavement support groups; laughter in mealtime family interactions; and misgendering in conversation.

Marco's research contributes to fundamental understandings of social interaction, but it also has practical implications. He collaborates with colleagues within the VERDIS research group to develop training resources for communication in palliative and end-of-life care (RealTalk).  

In the 2023-2024 academic year, Marco is leading the modules Social Psychology and Communication; and Introduction to Communication and Media Studies: Theories, Approaches and Practices.

Current postgraduate research students

  • Miao Tian: “Performing Class Identities Online: Migrant Workers, Social Media, and Social Inequalities in Contemporary China”. Co-supervised with Sabina Mihelj
  • Katie Jordin: “Big Boys, Real Men: How do repair sequences in everyday talk contribute to the communication of heteronormative masculine constraints in early childhood?”. Co-supervised with Emma Richardson and Laura Jenkins
  • Jo Sims: “Ways people manage communicating difficult emotions in hospice consultations”. Co-supervised with Jessica Robles and Ruth Parry

Availability for PhD supervision:

Marco welcomes proposals from prospective PhD students focusing on aspects of language and social interaction and using the methodology of conversation analysis. If you would like to discuss a research proposal, please contact him at: m.pino@lboro.ac.uk 

    Selected Publications