Valeria Talbot is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of ISPI’s Middle East and North Africa Centre. She also is a lecturer at the Master in Middle Eastern Studies in ASERI – Catholic University, and at the IULM University of Milan. She was ISPI scientific coordinator of Arab Trans, a FP7 funded research project on political and social transformations in the Arab World after the Arab uprisings in 2010-2011. She was the scientific coordinator of the “Med and Gulf Executive Briefings” Project, aimed at advising the business community on economic opportunities in the MENA countries. From 2007 to 2012, she was Associate Editor of the ISPI review Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali. Furthermore, Talbot is a member of the Med Think 5+5 scientific committee and EuroMeSCo liason officer. 

She is active as a scholar, contributing to research projects and publishing a number of papers, articles and books. In particular, she is the editor of Focus Mediterraneo allargato, a quarterly report commissioned by the Italian Parliament and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. 

Before joining ISPI, she worked at the University of Catania and at the European Parliament in Brussels. She holds a Master degree in Political Science from the University of Catania and at M.Phil. in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.