Francesca Leucci

Francesca Leucci is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for European Private Law (ZEP) at the University of Graz and at the Institute for European Tort Law (ETL) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

After completing her law studies in Italy, she obtained an LL.M. in EU law from the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). She is admitted to the Italian Bar and has worked as a judicial assistant at the Administrative Court in Italy and at the Italian Competition Authority. She then obtained her doctorate from the Universities of Rotterdam, Bologna and Hamburg in the field of law and economics of environmental damage assessment. 

From 2023 to 2025, she was a lecturer in environmental law and economics at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and coordinated courses on international and EU environmental law for social and natural scientists. She is also an associate researcher in environmental law at the Wageningen University Law Group and at the Centre for Environment, Economy and Energy (C3E) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. 

Since September 2025, she has been lead author for the IPBES Methodology Assessment on Spatial Planning with Biodiversity in Mind (2025-2027), working on Chapter 6 (Policy). She has published papers on the assessment of environmental damage and liability for environmental and climate damage from a legal and economic perspective.