Francesca is a Senior Operational Researcher at the ICRC’s Center for Operational Research and Experience (CORE). She has extensive experience in research and policymaking and has worked in various capacities in international organizations, academia, think tanks, and NGOs for the past fifteen years. Her expertise is in humanitarian relief, conflict prevention, peace diplomacy, peacebuilding and peacekeeping. Francesca is a member of the Board of Directors at Mercy Hands Europe, an Adjunct Professor at the IE School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, where she teaches Risk and Foresight in International Development, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies of King’s College London. Previously, she worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Overseas Development Institute in London, where she led and supervised research on armed conflict and humanitarian responses to displacement. She was a researcher, a trainer, and a Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations (Department of Political Affairs, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Economic Commission for Latin America, High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNV and UNITAR) in Geneva, New York, Santiago de Chile, and Timor-Leste. She was an aid effectiveness analyst and a short-term election observer with the European Union (Policy Planning Unit, Election Observation Missions) in Brussels, Mozambique, and Nepal. Francesca has worked and volunteered extensively with homeless and refugees, in the former Yugoslavia, Italy, Lebanon, UK and USA, including by teaching trauma-informed yoga. She holds a PhD (with distinctions) in Political Science from Yale University, a MA (with distinctions) in International Development from SAIS-Johns Hopkins University, and a BA (summa cum laude) in Philosophy of Science from the Universities of Milan and Bremen.