Biography

Gaia Taffoni is a lecturer and researcher in public policy.

At the Florence School of Transnational Governance (STG) she teaches Policy Evaluation in the CIVICA’s joint master course and works to create innovative teaching and learning methodologies as part of the leadership and governance hub of the Florence STG.

Gaia holds a PhD in Political Science from Università Statale of Milano (2019) and has previously worked as a post-doc at University College London (2019-2020) in the ERC project Protego. She has been adjunct professor at University of Genova (2020) and Università Statale of Milano (2021-2022) teaching public administration and comparative public policy and teaching assistant at King’s College London (2018).

Her research focuses on regulatory governance, looking at the role and use of evidence in public policy and public administration. She is currently working on the RegTrust project with the University of Lausanne on the impact of regulatory procedures and tools on Trust in the Fintech sector. Her most recent work looks at regulatory tools that help governments anticipate future trends such as Strategic Foresight and how these tools can be integrated into the policy cycle.

She is collaborating with the ESPAS Horizon scanning project in developing foresight and anticipatory governance methodologies. Her research works appeared in international journals such as the Policy Study Journal, the Journal of European Public Policy, the European Journal of Risk Regulation and the European Policy Analysis Journal. Palgrave McMillan has published her monograph book on EU Rule of Law promotion and judicial politics.

She is a member of the ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Policy, the International Public Policy Association, the Italian Political Science Association, and the Association for the Promotion of the Right to Science, Science for Democracy.

Research projects, clusters and working groups

Ongoing

• Expert Knowledge and Authority in Transformative Times
• Transnational Democracy in the 21st century
• Evaluation use in public policy

Completed

• Procedural Tools for Effective Governance

Fields of expertise

Recent research output

• DUNLOP, Claire; KAMKHAJI, Jonathan; RADAELLI, Claudio M.; TAFFONI, Gaia; WAGEMANN, Claudius (2024), Designing rulemaking : how regulatory policy instruments matter for governance , Book
• CAGNIN, Cristiano; FOUBERT, Thierry; ANSTEY, Joanna; MILLER, Riel; TAFFONI, Gaia; LAFONT, Elodie (2024), Navigating the future : the role of geopolitics in shaping the education and skills of the next generation , Other
• ESPOSITO, Giovanni; TAFFONI, Gaia; TERLIZZI, Andrea; CRUTZEN, Nathalie (2024), Between institutions and narratives : understanding collective action in innovation policy processes , Article
• DE VITO, Laura; TAFFONI, Gaia (2023), Strategic foresight and policy evaluation : insights for an integrated approach , Article
• RADAELLI, Claudio M.; TAFFONI, Gaia (2023), Better regulation as soft law , Contribution to book
• DUNLOP, Claire; KAMKHAJI, Jonathan; RADAELLI, Claudio M.; TAFFONI, Gaia (2022), Measuring design diversity : a new application of Ostrom's rule types , Article