Paola Scarpellini

Paola Scarpellini born in Pisa on 1 July 1969, she graduated in Political Science at Pisa University in 1996 with a grade of 110/110 cum laude. As part of the ALFA program of the European Union in 2001 she studied in Chile and obtained the title of M.Sc in Asentamientos Humanos y Medio Ambiente at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Chile. In 2005 she obtained a PhD in Agricultural Economics and Policy (SSD: AGR/01) at the University of Bologna, with a thesis entitled: "Rural space and development dynamics: communities and paths compared. Pirituba – rural settlement in Brazil, Huilio – indigenous community in Chile, Cetica – rural community in Italy.

She collaborated with the University of Pisa, at the Department of Veterinary Sciences, participating in action-research projects at regional, national and international levels. In the 2021-2022 academic year she taught Social Farming Module in the Master's Degree Course in Animal Production Sciences and Technologies.
Internationally, she has worked as a MAE worker in cooperation projects in Latin America, as a consultant in a FAO project in Syria and WWF in Morocco and as a visiting professor in the USA, at the University of Florida and in China at the Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) and Beijing Agricultural University (CAU).
From 2007 to today she is organizing a Summer School - case study, a specialization course entitled "Food and Innovation in Rural Transition: the Tuscany Case", promoted by the Departments of Veterinary Sciences and Agricultural, Food and Agro-Environmental Sciences of the University of Pisa, part of the European program “International Master in Rural Development” IMRD Erasmus Mundus.

As part of his professional activity, she has provided technical assistance in projects commissioned to the University by regional and local public bodies for monitoring and evaluation activities of measures of the Rural Development Plan and she has carried out training courses for farmers and agricultural cooperatives, associations, public officials, in particular on aspects linked to the planning of interventions for the diversification of activities on agricultural companies and in rural areas.

From 2021 to 2024 she has been a fixed-term researcher at the Department of Economics and Business Sciences of the University of Florence and has been co-professor of the " Politica Agraria e Agroalimentare " course. She is currently a researcher technologist at the Department of Agricultural, Food and Agro-environmental Sciences.

Her research interests concern rural development and multifunctionality, in particular new welfare models in rural areas, dynamics of social and economic innovation and social farming. In recent years she had also worked on the topic of inclusive and sustainable territorial valorization of cultural heritage, products of origin and agrobiodiversity.
She is a member of the board of AiCARE, the Italian Agency for Responsible and Ethics Countryside and Agriculture and of the Sismondi Rural Studies Laboratory