Dr Roberta Discetti
About
Biography
Roberta Discetti is an interdisciplinary researcher in the field of sustainability and business ethics. Roberta has a background in philosophy (BA and MA), environmental communication (MA), and organisation studies (PhD). At the University of Surrey, Roberta is the Research and Training Manager at UNITAR CIFAL Surrey Centre and the Programme Leader for the MSc Sustainable Development in Practice within Surrey Online Learning.
University roles and responsibilities
- Research and training manager CIFAL centre Surrey
- Programme Leader MSc Sustainable Development in Practice
ResearchResearch interests
Roberta's research interests lie at the intersection of market-based activism for sustainable development, ethics of care for nature, and sustainable consumption and production. Her research draws from a relational ontology that privileges the study of relationships over entities, read through the lenses of ethical dilemmas, power dynamics, feminist philosophy, and decoloniality.
In terms of empirical studies, Roberta works mostly in the field of food sustainability. She has worked on multiple EU-funded projects on sustainable food systems, such as Strength2Food (Strengthening European food chain sustainability by quality and procurement policy), FoodMapp (Local Food supply communicated through a transactional searchable Map-based Application), and GISmart (Geographical Indications’
contribution to smart territorial development and sustainability). She has also worked on British Council-funded SUNRISE project (Supporting University Network for Research in Sustainability Engagement).
Roberta is co-founder and co-lead of SETS seminars (Socio-ecological Transition Seminars) in collaboration with the Research Group on Collective Action, Change, and Transition at the University of Trento (Italy) and the Environmental Sociology Section at the University of Orebro (Sweden).
Being keen on academia-practice synergies, Roberta collaborates with several NGOs in the UK and abroad, including the Fairtrade Foundation (UK), the Fairtrade Society (UK) and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (Belgium). Since 2017, she has been an active member of the International Fair Trade Symposium Steering Committee.
Research interests
Roberta's research interests lie at the intersection of market-based activism for sustainable development, ethics of care for nature, and sustainable consumption and production. Her research draws from a relational ontology that privileges the study of relationships over entities, read through the lenses of ethical dilemmas, power dynamics, feminist philosophy, and decoloniality.
In terms of empirical studies, Roberta works mostly in the field of food sustainability. She has worked on multiple EU-funded projects on sustainable food systems, such as Strength2Food (Strengthening European food chain sustainability by quality and procurement policy), FoodMapp (Local Food supply communicated through a transactional searchable Map-based Application), and GISmart (Geographical Indications’
contribution to smart territorial development and sustainability). She has also worked on British Council-funded SUNRISE project (Supporting University Network for Research in Sustainability Engagement).
Roberta is co-founder and co-lead of SETS seminars (Socio-ecological Transition Seminars) in collaboration with the Research Group on Collective Action, Change, and Transition at the University of Trento (Italy) and the Environmental Sociology Section at the University of Orebro (Sweden).
Being keen on academia-practice synergies, Roberta collaborates with several NGOs in the UK and abroad, including the Fairtrade Foundation (UK), the Fairtrade Society (UK) and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (Belgium). Since 2017, she has been an active member of the International Fair Trade Symposium Steering Committee.
Teaching
Roberta is passionate about experiential and dialogic teaching and strives to create a learning environment that is person-centred, research-informed, and practice-oriented. Her pedagogy is grounded in care and human flourishing and draws from transformative education for sustainability.
She has designed, led, and taught several modules in Organisational Behaviour, Responsible Management, Leading and Managing Change, and Research Methods, both at Undergraduate and Postgraduate Levels. She is currently the Programme Leader for the MSc Sustainable Development in Practice within Surrey Online Learning at the University of Surrey.
Sustainable development goals
My research interests are related to the following:
