Dr Roberta Discetti
Pronouns: she/her
Academic and research departments
Institute for Sustainability, Surrey CIFAL training centre, School of Engineering.About
Biography
Roberta Discetti is an interdisciplinary researcher in the field of business ethics and sustainability. Roberta's research interests lie at the intersection of socio-ecological transitions, sustainable food systems, ethical consumption, and market-based activism.
Background. Roberta has a background in philosophy (BA and MA), environmental communication (MA), and business ethics (PhD). She has conducted her doctoral studies on food activism and fair trade at the University of Portsmouth. She then covered a post-doc position at Newcastle University working on food sustainability. Prior to joining the University of Surrey, Roberta was a lecturer in business ethics and management at Bournemouth University, with experience in teaching business ethics on the MBA and Senior Leaders Apprenticeship programmes. At the University of Surrey, Roberta is supporting the training and research programmes at UNITAR CIFAL Surrey Centre and is the Programme Leader for the MSc Sustainable Development in Practice within Surrey Online Learning.
EU research projects. Roberta has worked on multiple EU-funded projects on sustainable food systems, such as Strength2Food (Strengthening European food chain sustainability by quality and procurement policy), FoodMapp (Local Food supply communicated through a transactional searchable Map-based Application). She is currently working on two active EU projects, FoodCLIC (Integrated urban FOOD policies – developing sustainability Co-benefits, spatial Linkages, social Inclusion and sectoral Connections to transform food systems in city-regions) and GISmart (Geographical Indications’ contribution to smart territorial development and sustainability). She has also worked on the British Council-funded SUNRISE project (Supporting University Network for Research in Sustainability Engagement). Her recent work in the field has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Rural Studies, Urban Studies, and Journal of Business Research.
Engagement. Roberta is co-founder and co-lead of SETS seminars (Socio-ecological Transition Seminars) in collaboration with the Research Group on Collective Action, Change, and Transition at the University of Trento (Italy) and the Environmental Sociology Section at the University of Orebro (Sweden). Being keen on academia-practice synergies, Roberta collaborates with several NGOs in the UK and abroad, including the Fairtrade Foundation (UK), the Fairtrade Society (UK) and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (Belgium). Since 2017, she has been an active member of the International Fair Trade Symposium Steering Committee and has contributed to the organisation of the symposium in 2018, 2021, 2023, and 2026.
University roles and responsibilities
- Research and training manager CIFAL centre Surrey
- Programme Leader MSc Sustainable Development in Practice
ResearchResearch interests
Roberta's research interests lie at the intersection of market-based activism for sustainable development, ethics of care for nature, and sustainable consumption and production.
Her research draws from a relational ontology that privileges the study of relationships over entities, read through the lenses of ethical dilemmas, power dynamics, feminist philosophy, and decoloniality.
She is an expert in qualitative research methods, including ethnography, digital ethnography, interviews, and focus groups. She is also experienced in participative research methods, such as World Cafe' and embodied research methods.
Research interests
Roberta's research interests lie at the intersection of market-based activism for sustainable development, ethics of care for nature, and sustainable consumption and production.
Her research draws from a relational ontology that privileges the study of relationships over entities, read through the lenses of ethical dilemmas, power dynamics, feminist philosophy, and decoloniality.
She is an expert in qualitative research methods, including ethnography, digital ethnography, interviews, and focus groups. She is also experienced in participative research methods, such as World Cafe' and embodied research methods.
Teaching
Roberta is passionate about experiential and dialogic teaching and strives to create a learning environment that is person-centred, research-informed, and practice-oriented. Her pedagogy is grounded in care and human flourishing and draws from transformative education for sustainability.
She has designed, led, and taught several modules in Organisational Behaviour, Responsible Management, Leading and Managing Change, and Research Methods, both at Undergraduate and Postgraduate Levels. She is currently the Programme Leader for the MSc Sustainable Development in Practice within Surrey Online Learning at the University of Surrey.
Sustainable development goals
My research interests are related to the following:
