dr. M (Mirta) Alessandrini PhD
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Mirta Alessandrini is an Assistant Professor of Agri-food Law in the Law Group at Wageningen University & Research (WUR). Her research focuses on the legal challenges of sustainability transitions within agri-food systems. Her research combines insights from sociology, environmental studies, and agri-food studies, broadening the scope of conventional legal analysis to tackle compelling issues in agri-food legislation impacting local communities in both rural and urban settings.
Dr Alessandrini holds a PhD in Food Law from the Doctoral School on the Agro-Food System (AGRISYSTEM) at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy) and a Master’s degree in Law (LLM) (cum laude) from Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy). Her doctoral research investigated the role of Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) within the EU legal framework, employing a comparative analysis with the Californian regulatory approach. This work included a research visit to the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).
Her work is structured around two key areas: (1) agri-food law, and (2) food safety law challenges in the sustainability transition. Within these areas, her research focuses on: the regulation of SFSCs; the social dimensions of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); and the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), new genomic techniques (NGTs) and novel foods.
Her research is supported by various projects and funding. Current involvement includes the TOLERATE (Horizon Europe 2023-2027) EU project, where she leads the regulatory assessment work package on regulatory challenges of engineered ancient DNA used to protect crops from drought caused by global warming. Past projects include the SMARTCHAIN (H2020) EU project, which focused on innovation in short food supply chains based on a multi-stakeholder approach. Her PhD thesis and subsequent work on small-scale farmers’ regulation culminated in the publication of the book titled Regulating Short Food Supply Chains in the EU (Springer, 2024).
Dr Alessandrini is the Academic Coordinator for the Food Law & Regulatory Affairs Specialisation (Food Safety MSc programme). She coordinates and teaches several agri-food law courses, including "Law for Agri-Food Systems Transformation" and "Food Law". She also led the development and implementation of the WUR Academy’s EU Farm to Fork Food Laws professional training program and, with her colleagues with a food law specialization, co-launched and co-leads the Food Law Academics Network (FLAN), a global network of approximately 300 scholars across 50 countries.