Since 2000 I have been a tenured professor at the University of Pavia, where I teach in psychology degree courses.

I am Full Professor in Developmental Psychology and head of the Parenting Attachment and Support Laboratory – LAG – email: lag@unipv.it

I was a researcher at the University of Trieste (1995-2000), researcher and clinical psychologist at the IRCS San Raffaele in Milan (1988-1995).

Since 1990 I have been a member of the Order of Psychologists of Lombardy, as a psychologist qualified to practice the profession of psychotherapist. My main clinical interests concern the area of developmental age, parenting support and personality disorders.

I completed my studies at the University of Genoa (1984, Degree in Philosophy), the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (1988, Specialization in Psychology and 1992 PhD in Social and Developmental Psychology) and the State University of Milan (1994, Post-Doctorate in Psychology). I worked as an invited Fellow at Cornell Medical Center-New York Hospital (NY, USA) from 1990 to 1991, dealing with emotional regulation and personality disorders.

I am an expert in the field of attachment assessment, where I have undergone specialized training and certifications for the following tools: Adult Attachment Interview, Strange Situation Procedure, Manchester Child Attachment Story Task, Hostile/helplessness AAI coding system, Emotional Availability Scale, Video-Feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting-VIPP-SD, CONNECT parent group.

My main interests are in social-emotional development, with a focus on attachment, the assessment of socio-emotional risk factors in development and parenting.

I deal with evidence-based interventions in the field of parenting and interventions in development, with a special interest for Personality disorders.

I am a certified trainer for the Video-feedback intervention Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline-VIPP-SD (for parents of children up to 6 years old) and for the CONNECT parent group intervention (for parents of adolescents).

Another area concerns intervention models in the field of personality disorders; I am a certified clinician and trainer for the Marsha Linehan dialectical model (DBT) to which I have dedicated most of my clinical work (2011, Visiting Professor at the University of Washington).

Since 2022 I have been President of the Italian Society for Dialectical Behavior Therapy-ets-SIDBTets, affiliated with the US international certified training body BTech Institute.