Serena is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Serena is also a member of the VUB RHEA Centre of Expertise on Gender, Diversity & Intersectionality and the Brussels Interdisciplinary Research centre on Migration and Minorities (BIRMM).

Serena obtained her PhD in Political Science at VUB in 2018. In her PhD thesis "Romani Women in European Politics. Exploring Multi-Layered Political Spaces for Intersectional Policies and Mobilizations", she investigated whether contemporary European multi-layered political spaces contribute to fostering or hindering intersectional policies and mobilizations, both at the national and the transnational levels.

Serena holds a Postgraduate Certificate in EU Law on Immigration and Asylum from the 'Odysseus Academic Network' of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (2013), an MA in International Politics and Relations from the University of Pisa (2009, summa cum laude), and a BA in International Communications from the University for Foreigners of Perugia (2005). During her Master, she spent a year as an Erasmus student at the Department of Hautes Etudes Internationales (HEI) of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (I.Na.L.C.O. – Paris).

From 2009 to 2012 Serena worked in the NGO sector in the Western Balkans and Eastern Africa.

Serena's research work has been published in the European Journal of Politics and Gender, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, and Politics, Groups, and Identities, among others.

Activism, Anti-Roma Racism/Anti-Gypsyism, Central Eastern Europe, Civil Society, Diversity Governance, Europeanization, Equ(al)ity & Non-discrimination, (Political) Intersectionality, Intersectional Mobilizations, Minority Politics, Political Opportunity Structures, Political Participation, Racisms, Roma rights, Roma women, Romani (Gender) Politics, Safe Spaces, Social Movements.