My passion and commitment to make urban areas more liveable and sustainable places for their inhabitants have been – for more than 15 years – the leading reason of my educational and professional choices. My bachelor’s degree in Urbanism, my masters in Urban Planning & Policy Design and my doctorate in Urban Studies allowed me to gain a thorough understanding of complex urban systems, as well as to gather an increasing command of the concepts and main theories of participatory planning, urban regeneration, and integrated development. During my PhD, in particular, I focused on the research and analysis of European policies and instruments for territorial development, paying specific attention to area-based and local development initiatives. Additionally, my expertise on community-led local development case-studies and best practices has been enriched through a number of visiting scholarships in the USA and Germany. In my professional career as urban researcher and local development advisor I have been working on the research, analysis and mapping of several urban neighbourhoods in Italy, Germany, Romania and Belgium; on the identification of the needs and growth potential of several European cities; and on the design of tailor-made integrated local development strategies capable of maximising the benefits for the most disadvantaged residents, as well as on the design of EU projects (e.g. Urban Innovative Actions; Horizon 2020, INTERREG, etc...).

Transnational learning and the transfer of good practice have been at the core of my educational, academic, and professional paths for more than a decade, and my direct experience lays on three main levels. First, having been involved in international and multicultural academic and professional environments for nearly a decade I had the opportunity to exchange ideas, knowledge and methodologies with dozens of fellow colleagues from all over the world. Second, most of my research activities are focused on policy learning or transfer. My bachelor thesis and my visiting scholarship at the City University of New York – respectively dedicated to North-European policies for the re-use of abandoned property, and to neighbourhood-based community development initiatives in New York City – aimed at analysing and understanding how such policies and best practices could be transferred in other contexts. My doctoral dissertation aimed at assessing a representative case-study of participatory neighbourhood development in Berlin in order to identify universally valid policy lessons and provide recommendations for the improvement of both the regulation and implementation of Cohesion Policy’s Community-Led Local Development instrument. Third, as an advisor on local development I regularly liaise with city officials or technicians, and I am thus well aware of the wide spectrum of issues that may affect and influence the transfer of a model policy or best practice to a specific location