Biographical Info |
I was appointed Professor of Developmental Psychology in the University of Pavia in 2000.
Prior to the current post I worked as researcher and clinician at IRCS San Raffaele of Milan (1988-1995) and as a researcher at the University of Trieste from 1995 - 2000.
Since 1990 I have been a member of the Italian Psychologists’ Association (OPL) as psychologist and psychotherapist. My main clinical interests are in the field of socio-emotional development, parenting and personality disorders.
I gained a Master degree in Philosophy at Genoa University in 1984. I continued my studies at the Catholic University in Milan, where I received my Ph.D. in Psychology in 1992.
While a Ph.D student, I also completed a research fellowship at The New York-Hospital-Cornell Medical Center (1990-91), dealing with emotion regulation and borderline personality disorder.
I specialised in attachment assessment, with trainings and certifications for the following instruments: “Adult Attachment Interview”, “Strange Situation Procedure”, “Manchester Child Attachment Story Task”, “Hostile/Helplessness AAI Coding System”, “Emotional Availability Scale”.
My research focuses on the mechanisms of socio-emotional development and the processes involved in risk for atypical or psychopathological development. I am particularly interested in the intersection between social and biological processes in children's development, and accordingly I use a range of diverse methods, including observational techniques for measuring family processes (attachment, parenting), quantitative and molecular genetics for examining genes and gene-environment interactions. |