Stellamarina Donato is a postdoctoral researcher in social sciences at LUMSA University of Rome, Italy. In March 2022, she defended her Ph.D. thesis on the development of the terms and policies adopted by the international community in fighting gender-based violence against women (GBVAW). The thesis was approved with honors (cum laude) with the additional title of Doctor Europaeus. In January 2022, she won a post-doc scholarship on Women in the Mediterranean during the pandemic at LUMSA University of Rome, Italy. From January 2020 to June 2020, she won a scholarship as Visiting Ph.D. researcher at the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR). From January 2018 to June 2018, she was a research intern at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences. She worked on a Project about Populism and attitudes toward the EU in Central Europe. She obtained her Master’s degree in 2017 in International Relations from the University of Bologna, where she focused on EU-Mediterranean relations with a thesis entitled: « Migrants: a challenge for the EU and its labor market (Case Study: the EU and the MENA region).

Her research interests include gender and policies with a focus on women’s rights and gender-based violence against women and EU-MENA policies with a focus on migration and populism. On these research topics, she has published essays, book chapters and articles in international and national journals, such as International Review of Sociology, The International Journal of Press/Politics, Italian Sociological Review, The Communication Review and Cultura Latinoamericana.