Margherita Melillo is an associate with the Health and Human Rights Initiative at the O’Neill Institute, where she focuses on tobacco control and diet-related policies for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases.
Before joining O’Neill, Melillo was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law. In 2020, she completed her Ph.D. at the European University Institute, where she focused her research on the role of evidence in the international law on tobacco control. Her thesis won the 2021 Antonio Cassese Prize, and is going to be published as a book by Cambridge University Press.
Melillo has presented her research at a number of international conferences, published in peer-reviewed journals, and taught at several universities to different audiences (undergraduates, graduates, professionals). She speaks Italian, English, French, Spanish, and has a basic knowledge of German.
In addition to the Ph.D., Melillo holds a law degree from the Università di Pisa, a diploma from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, and is admitted to the bar of Naples, Italy.
