Elena is a Reader and Head of Department at the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) at the University of Warwick and an Advance HE Principal Fellow. She obtained a master’s degree (2007) and a PhD (2010) in Chemistry from the University of Milan and she held post-doctoral positions at the University of Cambridge (2011) and Warwick (2013) before joining her current department (2015) where, inspired by her scientific background, she develops and oversees interdisciplinary and wellbeing-positive learning opportunities for all Warwick students.
Elena creates new interdisciplinary modules, events and activities that explore complex topics and issues, creating connections between the scientific disciplines and the humanities. As a result, students from any disciplinary background and level (from ‘freshers’ to PGTs) feel empowered to engage with global topics such as wellbeing, genetics and water, developing an understanding of the crucial role of interdisciplinarity when tackling the issues of our times and expanding their own learning horizons and practices. She plays a key role sector-wide in creating and promoting interdisciplinary education, enabling the development of wider interdisciplinary programmes at Warwick as well as supporting UK and international colleagues in this task.
Elena is committed to creating learning experiences and environments that sustain positive student and staff wellbeing. Her work, which is funded by several UK bodies, shows how to best support students’ wellbeing throughout their learning experience, enabling them to fulfil their potential, and how to effectively embed wellbeing in the curriculum. Her multi-awarded wellbeing pedagogic practices developed at Warwick have been adopted in several UK and international institutions.
The recognition that each student is precious, unique and has invaluable talents that need to be discovered and nurtured in a university environment that is caring and inclusive shapes Elena’s interdisciplinary and wellbeing pedagogic practices, her educational research projects, and her collaborations, underpinned by participatory practices such as co-creation, with different colleagues and students. For this work in the fields of wellbeing and of interdisciplinary pedagogies, Elena was the recipient of the Warwick Teaching Excellence Award twice, in 2018 and in 2020.