Marie Curie Individual Fellowship

JustWATER is the research project signed by Dr Francesca Greco for which the University of Bergamo has signed the Grant Agreement relating to a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships action. Resulting in the top 6% of the proposals submitted in 2022, JustWATER obtained funding of 188,590 Euros, including research support regarding training, technical instrumentation and support staff. Lasting 24 months, the research is aimed at two types of targets. At a national level it will provide useful elements to Italian policy-makers, while at an international level it will produce replicability of the model produced to the advantage of various countries that are preparing to formulate their own water policies by including the agro-food export component in their water strategies, according to the Water-Energy-Food-Environment (WEFE) model.

Under the supervision of prof. Filippo Menga, professor of the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures, already winner of the same funding in 2015 with a project at the University of Manchester, the project benefited from dual support from the University: firstly through an orientation service and subsequently throuigh a scientific personalized consultancy for the drafting of the project proposal.

Dr Francesca Greco is an international water and food policy expert with more than twenty years of experience in transboundary aquifers, gender and water, water footprint and virtual water, water governance. She will be moving from Cyprus, where she worked on the project "Water is one: promoting water cooperation and awareness of water issues in Cyprus for both communities on the island".


JustWATER will produce decision-making tools for Italian policy-makers, who will be able to evaluate at a country-system level where our agri-food exports come from (virtual water exports) which insist on vulnerable aquifers and river basins considered at risk, through GIS maps available online and a series of communication initiatives, including a final workshop that will involve water policy makers and stakeholders in Italy.

The project will also provide a component for direct use by citizens who will be able to geo-locate through a website where Italian agri-food products that are not water- sustainable are being traded through the visualisation of their international trajectories in the food trade system. The project will provide a census of all water experts in Italy, investigating gender trajectories in this sector and reporting their opinions regarding the difficult Italian scenario, compressed between drought, floods, climate crisis and the slow and difficult birth of a national water policy which seems still fragmented in terms of political structures at the country- level.

What are MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships? The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (PF) actions are European funding limited in time that allow to carry out advanced research in different disciplines for individuals who are selected through an evaluation process that lasts approximately 6 months, carried out at European level, involving multiple international examiners.

In 2022 the winners of the funding, considered excellent in their field of research, went through a selection process out of a total of 7,044 applications, where the success rate was only 17%. The actions supports the research training and career development of researchers who already hold a PhD, in collaboration with a supervisor and through the principle of international mobility.