Full Professor of Political Economics at the La Sapienza University in Rome, Franzini is the director of the CRISS Center of Interuniversity Research on the Social State, scientific coordinator of the “Economy and Environment” research area for the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economics and co-editor of Meridiana.
In 2003 he was a member of the Parliamentary Commission which controls the activities of institutions managing obligatory forms of social security and social assistance. He collaborates with the Rivista delle Politiche Sociali and the website, Lavoce.it.