She graduated with honours in 1999 with a dissertation entitled L'imputazione preliminare (“The Preliminary Charge”). After obtaining her PhD in Criminal Procedure in 2004, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship for the two-year period 2005–2007, followed by a research fellowship, subsequently renewed until her appointment as Researcher in December 2010. Confirmed in this position in 2014, she obtained the National Scientific Qualification for the role of Associate Professor in Competition Sector 12/G2 in 2013.
Among her research interests, she has extensively addressed issues concerning personal precautionary measures and, in recent years, has focused on restrictions on the personal liberty of foreign nationals aimed at their removal from Italian (and European) territory.
Her publications also cover several other areas of criminal procedural law, including special proceedings (particularly giudizio immediato and abbreviated trial proceedings), the relationship between criminal proceedings and the mass media, judicial remedies protecting prisoners’ rights, preventive measures, the evidentiary circulation of wiretaps, the defendant’s right to remain silent, and priority criteria in the exercise of criminal prosecution. She has also studied emergency legislation adopted to conduct criminal trials during the pandemic period and carried out research on the specific features of criminal procedural rules designed to address human trafficking. One of her recurring areas of interest concerns criminal proceedings involving defendants living in conditions of social, linguistic, or economic marginalisation.
She has collaborated with the Italian School for the Judiciary (Scuola Superiore della Magistratura), both at central and local levels, as well as with various legal institutions. She has served three times on the commission responsible for qualifying lawyers to practise before the higher courts and once on the commission for qualification to the legal profession.
She has participated in several research projects co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), including: The Reasonable Duration of Proceedings: Guarantees and Efficiency in Criminal Procedure (2003); Testimonial Evidence in the European Judicial Area: Mutual Recognition and Harmonisation Perspectives (2005); and Criminal Appeals through the Prism of Due Process. She also participated in the AGIS 2006 international research project entitled Garantias procesales para sospechosos e inculpados en procesos penales en la Unión Europea, as well as in the international research project La trata de seres humanos. In recent years, she has participated in: the PRIN 2017 project coordinated by Professor Massimo Donini entitled Criminal Case Law Digests and Accessibility of the Law: Building Procedure within the European Legal Space; the research project Innovation 4 Inclusion – Italian Ministry of University and Research, PI Professor Claudia Cesari (2018–2019); the research project La trata de seres humanos tras un decenio de su incriminación – Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, PI Carolina Villacampa Estiarte and Andrea Planchadell Gargallo (2020–2022); the research project Priority. Shaping the Prosecution Organisational Model of Criminal Reports – Italian Ministry of University and Research, PI Francesco Caprioli (2023–2026); and the research project Biometrics and Criminal Proceedings – Italian Ministry of University and Research, PI Claudia Cesari (2023–2026). In 2024–2025, she served as scientific coordinator and partner of the FAMI PROG-911 project entitled SESTANTE.RA - Services for Foreign Nationals: Qualification and Know-how in the Ravenna Territory.
She is the author of two monographs: the first, published in 2012, entitled La domanda cautelare nel sistema delle cautele personali (“The Precautionary Request in the System of Personal Precautionary Measures”); the second, published in 2018, entitled Detenzione amministrativa dello straniero e diritti fondamentali (“Administrative Detention of Foreign Nationals and Fundamental Rights”). Together with colleagues Francesca Curi, Federico Martelloni and Alvise Sbraccia, she contributed to the volume I migranti sui sentieri del diritto (“Migrants on the Paths of Law”), now in its second edition (2021), within which she authored Part IV, entitled The Protean Coercive Apparatus Designed for Foreign Nationals.
In 2025, she was entrusted by the Rector of the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna with the role of rapporteur in oral proceedings before the three sections of the University Disciplinary Board.
