Dr Marco Pino

Pronouns: He/him
  • Senior Lecturer in Communication and Social Interaction
  • Google Scholar
  • RealTalk

    • 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 has studied how people complain about mistreatments, how they challenge other people’s perspectives, and how they share sensitive personal information. His research contributes to understandings of how humans 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, medical 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 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 2022-2023 academic year, Marco is teaching the module in Social Psychology and Communication.

    Current postgraduate research students

    • Dave Evans: "A qualitative study exploring managerial and donor perspectives of charitable impact, efficacy, and the effective altruism movement". Co-supervised with Thomas Thurnell-Read
    • 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

    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