Daniela is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, where she serves as Erasmus Coordinator, Deputy Dean for Internationalisation and Research and Vice-coordinator of the PhD program in Political Sciences. She is also Visiting Professor of Political Violence and Terrorism at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek.

She currently serves as Secretary General of the Italian Political Science Association (SISP), and as President of the European Peace Research Association (EuPRA). She is a member of the ISA Governing Council, and Chair of the ECPR Standing Group on International Relations. She is also review editor of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

Daniela has been Visiting Scholar at several Universities and Research Centres in Europe, the US and Asia. She has been awarded a DAAD Fellowship at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, a research grant at the European Union Center of Excellence, University of Alberta, Canada, and a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Universidade Federal de Santa Caterina, Florianopolis, Brazil.

She has published extensively in International Relations and EU politics. Her research is focused on non-state actors’ influence on global politics, both positive (civil society organisations and NGOs) and negative (organised crime and terrorism).

With Marianna Charountaki, she was recently appointed co-editor of the Springer series Non-state actors in International Relations. She is the author of EU Emergency Response Policies and NGOs: Trends and Innovations (Palgrave 2018).