Elena Cini

Elena Cini is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Global Sustainability Institute within the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). Her interdisciplinary work bridges ecological science, agricultural systems, and social research to address critical sustainability challenges including pollinator health, food system resilience, and land management.

Her academic credentials include:

• PhD in Ecology and Agri-environmental Research from the University of Reading (UK)
• MSc in Food Security from the University of Glasgow (UK)
• BSc in Food Science and Technology from the University of Milan (Italy)

Cini's research integrates quantitative field studies with qualitative social science approaches to investigate bee health dynamics, pesticide impacts on pollinators, and food system vulnerabilities. Her work on the BBSRC-funded BAFR project develops backcasting methodologies to strengthen UK food security against external shocks, while her prior NERC-Treescapes iDeer research examined deer management perspectives within net-zero land use frameworks. She employs transdisciplinary methods including large-scale European fieldwork, participatory stakeholder engagement, and innovative diagnostic tools like MALDI mass spectrometry for bee health monitoring.

Analysis of her 2021-2025 publications reveals a dominant focus on pollinator-ecosystem interactions across European agricultural landscapes, with recurring themes in pesticide ecotoxicology, landscape ecology, and socio-ecological food system analysis. Her collaborative work spans multiple high-impact journals including Nature, Science of the Total Environment, and PLOS ONE, consistently emphasizing policy-relevant solutions for agricultural sustainability.

Cini actively contributes to major research initiatives including the Horizon EU PoshBee project (PhD work), NERC-Treescapes iDeer, and the current BBSRC-BAFR project. These grants support her cross-institutional collaborations with European research networks focused on developing actionable insights for environmental policy and agricultural practice. As part of ARU's Global Sustainability Institute, she works within an interdisciplinary team addressing planetary-scale environmental challenges through integrated scientific approaches.