Valentina Bambini is Full Professor of Linguistics at the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS in Pavia, where she is also the Coordinator of the PhD Program in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics (TEL) and Vice Rector for PhD Courses at IUSS.
She received her undergraduate training in Linguistics at Scuola Normale Superiore and University of Pisa. She earned her PhD in Linguistics at Scuola Normale Superiore (2007), with a dissertation on the neural basis of metaphor comprehension. She worked as postdoctoral fellow (2008-2010) and junior researcher (2010-2011) at the Laboratory of Linguistics of the Scuola Normale Superiore, and then as senior researcher (2011-2014) and associate professor (2014-2022) at IUSS Pavia. 
She taught pragmatics and neurolinguistics as Adjunct or Visiting Professor at San Raffaele in several university in Italy and abroad, among which Vita-Salute S. Raffaele University in Milan, University of Pisa, University of Verona, University of Zurich, University of Trondheim, XPRAG.de Summer School in Berlin, and Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Currently, she teaches neurolinguistics and neuropragmatics at IUSS and at the Master Degree in Psychology, Neuroscience and Human Sciences of the University of Pavia (joint program with IUSS).
Her research focus on experimental pragmatics and neuropragmatics, within the broader field of neurolinguistics. Her main areas of investigation are: 1) the comprehension of metaphors and other implicit meanings in the brain; 2) pragmatic language disorder in adults with psychiatric or neurological diseases; in this domain she has contributed novel tools for the assessment and training of pragmatic skills, among which the Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates (APACS) test; 3) pragmatic changes in the lifespan (development and aging).
From January 2023, she is the PI of the ERC Consolidator Grant “PROcessing MEtaphors: Neurochronometry, Acquisition and DEcay” (PROMENADE); https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101045733. She also coordinates the IUSS Unit in a project funded by Velux Stiftung on social communication in healthy aging (2022-2026) and in a project funded by the Italian Ministry of Health on pragmatic assessment and treatment in clinical settings (2020-2025). She is the coordinator of the IUSS funded project “Pragmatica sperimentale”.
Among her previous grants as PI, two EURO-XPRAG grants on figurative meaning (2009-2011), a grant from Regione Toscana to develop the APACS test (2010-2013), a PRIN project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (2017-2020) on the relationship between pragmatics and Theory of Mind across the lifespan. 
She co-founded the Experimental Pragmatics in Italy (XPRAG.it) research network (https://www.xpragit.com/).
She is a member of the 100esperte project (https://100esperte.it/) as a female expert in the STEM field of Psychology and Neurosciences.
She authored more than 70 publications in international journals and books, including Brain and Language, Neuropsychologia, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Applied Psycholinguistics. In Italian, she authored the book “Il cervello pragmatico” (Carocci, 2017) and coedited the volume “Pragmatica Sperimentale” (Il Mulino, 2022).
Twitter: @VBambini