Costanza HERMANIN

Course offered: Negotiation and Decision-Making in the EU: A Simulation Game (50h) with Pierpaolo SETTEMBRI and Jon WORTH

Costanza Hermanin is a Fulbright Schuman Scholar working on a comparative project examining the evolution of equal opportunity policies in the US and Europe. In 2026, she is spending one term at UC Berkeley's Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science and one at the Harvard Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy Programme.

Costanza is a Research Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. Her scholarship focuses on the politics and policies of the European Union, with particular attention to justice, home affairs and foreign policy. At the EUI, she has been leading the Inclusive Leadership Initiative and training projects on feminist fiscal policy. She has presented her work at the European Parliament, in a range of institutional and media contexts, and published in academic and policy outlets.

Costanza has taught at leading universities across Europe. She has co-led the College of Europe's signature simulation of the EU's ordinary legislative procedure for 10 years and has also implemented it at Sciences Po Paris. She also created simulations of EU enlargement negotiations at the College of Europe in Tirana and for the EU Diplomatic Academy for the Enlargement Region. In 2012, she and Pierpaolo Settembri received the Pademia Award for outstanding teaching on parliamentary democracy in Europe.

Costanza holds a PhD from the EUI and has been awarded two Fulbright Scholarships for comparative US-EU research — the first spent at the law schools of UC Berkeley and Columbia University.

Throughout her career, Costanza has worked in the cabinet of Italy's Minister of Justice, at the Open Society European Policy Institute in Brussels and within the European Commission and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She was among the founders of the Italian party +Europa and served as its Deputy Secretary. She is the founder and president of the NGO EquALL — for a Plural Democracy, and has contributed to the founding of the Berkeley Centre for Comparative Equality (BCCE) and Women In International Security Italy.