About me

I am a scholar and teacher who is driven by curiosity and a deep sense of responsibility towards the common good. I am committed to leaving a mark: to contribute to sustainability transformation and to support it in the social spaces where it may be happening. A heterodox thinker who defies labels, I cherish my diverse disciplinary background and international profile. I am ambitious but self-critical and take colleagues’ and students’ feedback seriously. I am a collegial colleague and a supportive, responsible, care-full teacher. I am loyal, but constructively critical in view of my own and my colleagues’ professional development and students’ empowerment.

I am Associate Professor of Social Change for Sustainability at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

I have a Laurea in Sociology (2002) from the University of Milan-Bicocca, an MSc in Environmental Economics and Management (2003) from Bocconi University in Milan, and a PhD (2010) from the Department of Geography of the University of Zurich, all with distinction.

I was appointed Assistant Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University in January 2018 and was promoted to Associate Professor in April 2019. Before joining Utrecht University, I was a Lecturer in Environment and Development in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Reading (2011-2017) in the United Kingdom. Before that, I worked as a postdoc (2011) at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Potsdam,  Germany, and before that I worked in Environmental Management (EMAS, ISO14001) and Sustainability Reporting at a Regional Environment Agency (2003-2004) and at the Organizing Committee of the XX Olympic Winter Games (2004-2006). I spent visiting periods at the Faculty of Human Sciences at the Universidad Nacional (Colombia) in 2013, and at the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University (United States) in 2015.

I am the recipient of two prestigious personal grants: a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, and a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Vidi grant. My research has also been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Geographical Society, and the British Council, among other funders. These two research projects are funding my research programme UNMAKING on transformation to sustainability. In 2012 I was awarded the CHANS Fellowship for my "promising contribution to the field of Coupled Human and Natural Systems" (CHANS). 

I am a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, a member of the International Society of Ecological Economics, of the Community Economies Research Network, and of the Sustainability Transition Research Network. I am also on the editorial boards of Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Sustainability Science, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and a reviewer for several research funding bodies and publishers. I am one of the founders of the Dutch Degrowth Platform. In the past, I was a member of the Board of Latin America Programme (LATINAMERIKA) at the Research Council of Norway, the Board of the European Farming System Association (IFSA), and the Social Sciences Roundtable at the Dutch Research Council.

I am a native Italian speaker. I also speak English, Spanish, German and Dutch.