Arianna is Associate Professor/Reader in Local Politics and the Deputy Director of the Local Governance Research Centre (LGRC) at the Department of Politics and Public Policy, De Montfort University. From July 2019 Arianna is  the Interim Director of IPPR North, the Leading think-tank for the North of England, working on a secondment basis. 

Before joining DMU in August 2016, she was a Researcher at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), University of Sheffield. She previously held academic positions at the University of Leeds (POLIS) working on the White Rose Consortium for the North of England project, the University of Huddersfield and Leeds Metropolitan University, where she was awarded a PhD in 2014. Before moving to the UK, Arianna worked as a researcher for regional governments and academic institutions in Italy. 

Arianna’s research focuses on territorial and local politics both in the UK and in comparative European perspective. Most recently, her work has concentrated on devolution and governance rescaling in the UK, with a particular emphasis on the ‘English Question’ and the case of the North of England. Her research in this area has looked at devolution deals; the politics, governance and political economy of the Northern Powerhouse; the changing landscape of local government, especially in the context of austerity and Brexit; and asymmetric regionalism. She is also interested in issues of territorial politics, decentralisation and regional governance across Europe; regionalist and independentist parties in Italy and in comparative perspective; and, more broadly, in EU politics and policy.

She has written extensively on this topics, publishing in distinguished journals such as Territory, Politics, Governance, Regional and Federal Studies, The Political Quarterly and Political Studies. Her latest book, ‘Developing England’s North. The Political Economy of the Northern Powerhouse’ (with C. Berry) was published by Palgrave in 2018. 

Arianna is a Trustee of the UK Political Studies Association (PSA), a Fellow of the RSA, and a Honorary Research Fellow at SPERI (University of Sheffield).