Mara Di Berardo, Ph.D.

Mara Di Berardo, Ph.D. is Communication Director and Italy node Co-Chair at The Millennium Project, Communication Officer at the Foresight Europe Network, and Lecturer and Consultant in Futures Studies, Communication, and Project Management for public and private bodies.

Mara has been working with The Millennium Project since 2007 supporting and developing research, events, and communication activities. The Millennium Project is a global participatory think tank composed of more than 70 Nodes worldwide, information, and software, building a global collective intelligence system whose mission is to improve thinking about the future. She has been the Communication Director there since 2021, Italy Node Co-Chair since 2017, and member since 2007, contributing to many research projects and activities and collaborating with prof. Eleonora Barbieri Masini.

She works as a Researcher in the fields of Futures Studies and Research and recently received and concluded the 2022 Third Futures Research Grant by The Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd Center for Futuristic Studies and the World Futures Studies Federation as Principal Investigator with a project analysis on World Futures Day 2022. Read World Futures Day 2022: A mixed method approach to identify topics of a global futures agenda on Futures.

At Foresight Europe Network, Mara, previously a member, works as Communication Officer since 2021 helping with their participatory vision building, strategy designing, and action-supporting process to connect people around Europe. Read The Foresight Europe Network: bringing futures/foresight people together.

She has been consulting member of the Italian Institute for the Future since 2019, member of the Scientific Council of the Alternative Planetary Futures Institute since 2021, member of the World Futures Studies Federation through IIF, and co-founder of the Italian Futurists Association in 2018. She is also reporter for Futura Network.

Mara works on Participatory Methodology, writes and manages EU-funded Research and Cultural Projects, and Communication and Participatory Plans. She has been working with many public and research institutions and associations over the years, among others for Italian Institute for the Future, Ozono Factory APS, Tampere University, Chieti-Pescara University, Singularity University Milan, to name a few, and has been applying participatory futures methods such as, for instance, WFD, Charrette, Futures Wheel, Delphi, and Structural Analysis.

She has been working as a Lecturer in Communication, Futures Studies, and Sociology at different universities, consortia, and organizations. These include the Harare Institute, ITC-ILO, Italian Institute for the Future, University of Parma, Chieti-Pescara University, University of Teramo, CNA/ECIPA. Watch E-participation: Guidelines and tips.

Between 2020 and 2022, Mara worked for the National Research Council of Italy as a CNR-Nano III Level Technologist, managing EU-funded research, conferences, and communication plans for projects such as H2020 INTERSECT and RIMMEL.

From 2018 to 2020, she was Research Fellow in Science Communication at CNR-IAC in Rome. She worked on the Analysis of Maths scientific dissemination best practices, concerning national and European projects at IAC-CNR, particularly for COPMAT (ERC Advanced Grant project) and for Archimede and Comic & Science magazines. She also worked there as Project and Financial Manager for many EU and national research projects from 2018 and collaborated with the Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies (IRPSS CNR) on participatory research projects and with the Public Relations Unit at CNR on scientific communication and dissemination. With Delphi-like consultation activities and laboratories, Mara aimed at promoting science communication. Follow her Contributions at Futuri Magazine.

Mara started her career around 2000 collaborating in projects applying futures and participatory/communication research at private and public organizations, such as, for instance, CNA (2002–2003), Chieti-Pescara University (2005–2008), Cedaf (2005–2006), Municipality of Modena (2008), and Software Consulting (2008) among others.

During those years, she became teaching assistant for university chairs, such as Sociology and Public Sphere Analysis at the University of Teramo (2004–2007), Sociology of economic and working processes, of Economic Development, and of environment and territory, Data Analysis for strategic choices, Foresight methods for social sciences at Chieti-Pescara University (2006–2009), Scenarios for innovation management at the Da Vinci Online University (2006–2008). She also became fellow researcher in scientific groups working on Social Futures Studies (2005) and Globalization (Tampere University, Sapienza University in 2006–2011), on integrating statistics and participatory methods (Chieti-Pescara University in 2006–2008) and on E-Democracy (FP6 Demo-Net member in 2007–2010) and continued her research collaborations with further bodies in the following years.

She also started to work early as Manager in various organizations, such as the University of Teramo (2004–2005) and the Gran Sasso Laga Park (2006), and later became Technical Secretary and Communication Officer in Public Bodies, such as the Province of Chieti until 2011, the University of Teramo in 2011, the DMC Gran Sasso Laga until 2015, and the Province of Teramo until 2015, were she worked on national and EU funded projects like FP7 MARLISCO and INTERREG ERCIP. Read Exploring public views on marine litter in Europe: Perceived causes, consequences and pathways to change.

Mara earned her Ph.D. in Cultures, Languages, and Politics of Communication in 2008 with the thesis Structured Communication in Social Participatory Planning and her Master’s Degree in Sciences of Communication in 2004 with her thesis The Electronic Government. Arrival point to modernize Public Administrations, both from the University of Teramo. She earned her High School Diploma in Accounting and Programming in 1998 from the B. Pascal Commercial and Technical Institute.

Throughout the years, Mara continued with her training and education. She received a post-lauream grant at the University of Teramo from 2004 to 2006 for a project on Monitoring of Change Management in the PEOPLE project, and certifications as Tourism and Communication Expert (2001), Decision Support System Expert Facilitator (2002), E-learning Expert (2005), European Projects Technical Writer and Financial Reporting (2012), Social Media Marketing and Blogging expert (2016) among others. She also worked as intern in Italian and EU organizations, for instance at the Italian Embassy in Dublin (2003).

Watch Di Berardo: “Il 2040 tra robot, lavoro, energia e servizi alle persone” — Futura Network, Instability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Reflection from the Dubai Future Forum, and Di Berardo: “We share resources and the environment with future generations” – Futura Network

Read World Futures Day 2022: A mixed method approach to identify topics of a global futures agenda (Futures 2022), The World Future Day Method: A 24-hour Round-the-world Global Discussion (World Futures Review, 2022), A Global Discussion about our possible futures during the 2021 World Future Day (Futures, 2022), Participation in Delphi-like methods: the Participatory Delphi (Italian, 2021), Education 2050. Suggestions from Italy (2020).

Visit her LinkedIn profile and her ResearchGate page. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.