Francesca Petrella is a professor at the Aix-Marseille University and a researcher in economics at the Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology (LEST-CNRS) since 2006.

She is co-responsible with Nadine Richez-Battesti of the second year of the Master Degree specialised in the management of third sector organisations of the Aix-Marseille University. She is member of research networks at national and international levels (e.g. CIRIEC International, CIRIEC France, RIUESS).

She has developed research works on social economy organisations, their evolution and interactions with public policies, social innovation, quality of work in social economy and on new forms of governance of social welfare services. In particular, she studied childcare and personal home care services.

She participated in different European research programmes, the latest being the TSI project (European research project aimed at identifying the scope and size of the third sector in Europe and at measuring its impact for society) in which EMES is involved and member of the french team of the ICSEM Project. She also realised the French report on Social enterprises and their ecosystem with Nadine Richez-Battesti.