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Donatella Padua

General Sociology - GSPS-05/A,Sociologia Generale - GSPS-05/A

Associate Professor of General Sociology – GSPS-05/A at UniCamillus since 2022. She holds the national qualification for Full Professorship and a PhD in Education Sciences.

At UniCamillus, she currently serves as Lecturer in General Sociology, Delegate for the Third Mission, Chair of the Third Mission Committee, Secretary General of the Advisory Board, and Member of the Single Guarantee Committee for Equal Opportunities.

Specialised in Digital Sociology, she is the author of Digital Cultural Transformation. Building Strategic Mindsets via Digital Sociology (Springer, 2021). Her research focuses on the intersection between digital transformation, digital culture, and social complexity, with specific application to the field of Health (Digital Health Sociology). She explores the social impact of these dynamics on a global scale, within organisations, and in the doctor–patient relationship.

A researcher in Sociology since 2005 and Associate Professor since 2021 at the University for Foreigners of Perugia, she has extensive teaching experience at both national (LUISS, LUISS Business School, Tor Vergata) and international level (UEL, Imperial College London, UK; Aix-en-Provence, France), delivering courses in English.

From 2012 to 2016, she served as Scientific Director at the Intelligent Positioning Research Centre (UK), now PI-Datametrics, a leading digital company. She was also a member of the Technical Secretariat for Research Policy at the Italian Ministry of University and Research from 2016 to 2017, and from 2017 to 2020 she served as Scientific Director of Futura Istruzione at the Ministry’s Directorate-General for Digital Innovation.

Building on her earlier professional background in the 1990s, where she held strategic and organisational roles in multinational corporations such as Procter & Gamble, as well as in national companies as Marketing Director, from 2006 to 2022 she continuously held key roles at the University for Foreigners of Perugia. These included Rector’s Delegate for the Third Mission, International Relations and Communication, and CRUI Delegate for the University–Labour Observatory, with responsibility for launching international strategic projects.

An internationally recognised author of over 50 scientific articles and volumes, she publishes with Springer and Palgrave Macmillan. She is a member of scientific committees and doctoral boards and is frequently invited as a speaker at international conferences.