Valeria is pursuing a joint PhD degree at the faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, and the faculty of Geosciences, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. She is affiliated with the ERC-funded PolyCarbon Project led by Prof. Katja Biedenkopf.

Valeria studies the history of climate change mitigation and institutional paradigms addressing the climate crisis. She is particularly interested in the historical and ideational evolution of climate policy mixes and she researches the case of the United Kingdom from 1956 to today. Her research aims to broaden current paradigms on climate governance and legislation, to include instruments that are not explicitly labelled as "climate policy" and that, however, impact the process of climate change mitigation. Her doctoral work further explores the effects of historical legacies on today's climate governance and legislation, as well as on the uptake of ready-to-deploy renewable energy technologies. Her PhD employs a multi-method approach, applying network analysis, comparative historical analysis, and case study methods.

Broadly trained in the environmental social sciences, Valeria has an interdisciplinary background specialising in environmental governance and human geography. She holds a Bachelor's degree from University of Pavia and a Master's of Science from University of Copenhagen, where she wrote her thesis on the vulnerability and resilience to urban flooding in Mumbai. She also completed a Master of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where she studied environmental policy. Previously, Valeria worked as a research assistant at the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, UNEP DTU Partnership.