Valentina is an economic sociologist who is interested in socio-political ideas of elites shaping economic integration in Europe. Currently, she is a PhD student at the Sociology Department of the University of Cambridge. Her thesis investigates the rise of economic nationalist ideas in political elite´s discourse. This entails analyzing policy proposals such as the advocacy of monetary nationalism and protectionist trade tariffs in Austria and the UK. For this, she was awarded the Adam Smith Fellowship for research on political economy by the George Mason University, US.

Before coming to Cambridge, she undertook her undergraduate degree in sociology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. There she worked on sociological perspectives of the financial crash of 2008. In particular, she assessed different cultural and socio-political ideas underlying economic models, which ultimately led to the breakdown of the financial system.

This research interest led Valentina to undertake her first Master´s degree in Economic Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her Master´s thesis analyzed the impact of the euro-crisis on European identity. Pursuing the study of social and political underpinnings of European economic integration further, she moved to Cambridge to explore the 2013 centralization of banking supervision through the European Central Bank for her second Master´s thesis.

Based on her specialisation, she then taught seminars at the University of Innsbruck, before returning to Cambridge for her PhD in October 2016.