Anna Berti Suman
anna.bertisuman@gmail.com
Tenure Track Assistant Professor, FISPPA, University of Padova
Anna Berti Suman is tenured Assistant Professor in Environmental Sociology & Law at the University of Padua. Straddling environmental socio-legal studies and civic participation in science, her research explores how ordinary people respond to climate and environmental stressors by gathering evidence, and how such evidence gets mobilised in different fora. She was Senior Researcher in Sustainable Innovation Law at Luiss University, Rome, and she served as Head of Research at the Laboratory for the Governance of the Commons (2025-2023). She was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship grantee and Dutch Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Ispra (2023-2020). She founded the “Sensing for Justice” project aimed at exploring civic monitoring for environmental law enforcement.
She is Qualified Barrister, and she has been following environmental litigation for various NGOs. She obtained her PhD in Environmental Law & Technology in 2020 from the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology & Society. She published impactful peer-reviewed articles, policy briefs and books. She is often invited to present her results in international scientific venues. In 2025, she obtained a competitive €1.3 million grant for the project “PersoNa – Personal Narratives in climate litigation” awarded by the Italian Science Fund. In 2024, she featured in the Top 2% Most Influential Scientists ranking by Stanford University and Elsevier, and her milestone book “Civic Monitoring for Environmental Law Enforcement” was published by Edward Elgar. In 2023, she received the European Commission’s Young Scientist Award and her work featured on Nature Sustainability. In 2022, she earned the “Science Engagement Breakthrough of the Year” title at the Falling Walls Science Summit, Berlin. In 2021, she was finalist for the “Morrione Investigative Journalism Award” with her investigation “Sentinelle” (Sentinels) on forms of civic resistance opposing oil extraction in Basilicata.
Recent Publication
2026) Berti Suman, A., Citizen Sensing for Risk Response, London, Palgrave.
(2025) Berti Suman, A., Oluchi Ashaheme, A., Anwar Modier, M., From gap to opportunity: regulatory voids as spaces for experimentation and innovation for sustainability, in “Italian Journal of Public Law”, 17(3).
(2025) Berti Suman, A., Urban platforms as drivers of socio-environmental transformations: the case of civic monitoring and citizens’ assemblies around Milan, in Smets, A., Ballon, P. (eds), “Handbook of Platform Urbanism”, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing.
(2024) Berti Suman, A., Burnette, A., A place for people’s knowledge in climate evidence: Exploring civic evidence in climate litigation, in “Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law”, 33(3).
(2024) Berti Suman, A., Civic Monitoring for Environmental Law Enforcement, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing.
(2024) Van Oudheusden, M., Berti Suman, A., Huyse, T., Huyse, H., Medvecky, F., The Valuable Plurality of the Citizen Sciences, in “Science & Technology Studies”, 37(1).
(2023) Berti Suman, A., Fathisalout Bollon, M., The (re-)turn to sensing: exploring the Sensing Contract in Time, in “Ragion Pratica”, 2.
(2023) Berti Suman, A., Balestrini, M., Haklay, M., Schade, S., When Concerned People Produce Environmental Information: A Need to Re-Think Existing Legal Frameworks and Governance Models, in “Citizen Science: Theory and Practice”, 8(1).
(2023) Olen, S.M., Berti Suman, A., Civic sentinels, in “Nature Sustainability”, 6.
(2023) Berti Suman, A., Heyen, N.B., Micheli, M., Reimagining health services provision for neglected groups: The ‘personalization from below’ phenomenon, in “Frontiers in Sociology”, 8.
(2022) Berti Suman, A., Peca, M., Greyl, L., Greco, L., Carsetti, P., The ‘Citizen Sensing Paradigm’ to Foster Urban Transitions: Lessons from Civic Environmental Monitoring in Rome, in “The European Journal of Risk Regulation”, 14(3).
(2021) Berti Suman, A., The Policy Uptake of Citizen Sensing, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishi