Cristiana Russo – Policy and Research Coordinator

Understanding, forecasting and analyzing the social changes affecting the life conditions of vulnerable people requires a deep knowledge of the needs (both expressed and silent), features and potentialities of specific minority groups, like migrants and refugees, Roma people, persons with disabilities, LGTBIQ, women and children with multiple risks of social exclusion.
Cristiana Russo is our senior expert on migration, social inclusion and human rights, working as Policy and Research Coordinator within isIMPACT.

Outside isIMPACT: Cristiana has worked as policy expert, evaluator and researcher in the field of immigration and social inclusion since 2005 (EU Programme EQUAL). She is a member of the Commision established by the Italian Ministry of Interior for the evaluation of projects under the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) and she was a member of the working group on the National Plan for the international protection beneficiaries’ integration, established within the same Ministry. She collaborated with major national and international human rights organizations like UNHCR, ANCI, ARCI, CSER, Red Cross.
Since 2009 she has been serving as expert at the Italian Presidency of Ministers’ Council within the Department of Youth and the Department of Equal Opportunities. She was cultural mediator, legal operator and project coordinator for the Italian Red Cross, managing a reception center in Rome (700 people hosted) as well as field officer in the Calabria Region within the national “Praesidium” project. As speaker, she attended many conferences and seminars on asylum seekers and refugees. She has also a wide experience in training activities for civil servants, social operators, students, law enforcement agents. She published various articles and papers on immigration, anti-discrimination and integration issues.

Education: Cristiana has a Master’s Degree in Political Science and three postgraduate University Masters : “Migrations: “Policies and resouces for social cohesion”; “Migration, culture and psychopathology”; “Cultural and religious mediation”.