Dr Marina Cino Pagliarello is an experienced researcher, policy analyst, and higher education expert specialising in European governance, transnational diplomacy, and the political economy of education. With 25 years of experience at the intersection of academia, policymaking, and consultancy, she has led high-impact research initiatives that bridge knowledge, innovation, and policy. Her work spans policy evaluation, stakeholder engagement, and strategic research on education governance, skills policy, and institutional reform. Her research agenda focuses on knowledge diplomacy, higher education governance, and the role of non-traditional actors in European policymaking. She is deeply engaged in the study of alternative diplomatic channels and has organised high-level academic and policy events to advance interdisciplinary dialogue in these fields.
Marina is currently Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance, where she leads the Higher Education Informal Diplomacy (HEIDI) project, examining how universities function as informal diplomatic actors in global governance. She recently developed the Higher Education Informal Diplomacy Dataset, a pioneering survey of university alliances and their role in transnational cooperation. Prior to joining the EUI, she was an ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics (ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳) and has held academic positions at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, University College London (UCL), Queen Mary University of London, and the University of Essex, lecturing on EU politics, public policy, and European political economy. Her monograph, Ideas and European Education Policy: 1975-2020, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022, and her work has appeared in leading political science journals, including the Journal of Public Policy and West European Politics.
Beyond academia, Marina has worked as an education policy researcher and specialist for over 25 ye