Dr Lidia Bonifati
Former Casual Research Assistant
Dr Lidia Bonifati
Former Casual Research Assistant
Lidia Bonifati is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Baffi Centre on Economics, Finance and Regulation of Bocconi University, as well as a Teaching assistant of Comparative constitutional law at the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna. Dr. Bonifati is also an Affiliated researcher of the Research Group on Government and Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp. Previously, she was a Research assistant at the Oxford Internet Institute (2024), a Junior researcher at the EURAC Institute for Comparative Federalism (2023) and a Trainee at the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe (2020).
Dr. Bonifati hold a joint PhD in Legal Studies awarded by the University of Bologna and the University of Antwerp (2023) and a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Political science and International relations by the University of Bologna (2018). She held visiting positions at the School of Law of the Queen’s University of Belfast (2018), the Department of Law of the European University Institute (2021-2022), the EURAC Institute of Comparative Federalism (2022), and is currently Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute (Hilary Term 2025).
Her research interests develop along three strands: 1. Minority rights and diversity governance (constitutional design for divided societies; asymmetric federalism; federalism and legal pluralism); 2. AI and international humanitarian law (dual-use technologies and fundamental rights; AI and peacebuilding; digital colonialism); and 3. Comparative research methodologies (decolonial comparative law; empirical legal studies).
In her doctoral thesis, Dr. Bonifati studied the legal factors explaining a low, medium, or high degree of constitutional asymmetries in divided multi-tiered systems through a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on 16 case studies. In her postdoc project, “Decision-Making in the Age of Emergencies,” she explores the use of advanced technologies in emergencies (i.e., AI and drones), specifically during armed conflicts and humanitarian missions.