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Dr Leonelli joined LSE in September 2023. She researches and teaches in the fields of climate change law, environmental law, trade law, and risk regulation. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of International Economic Law, the World Trade Review, the Journal of World Trade, Legal Studies, the Journal of Environmental Law, Transnational Environmental Law, the Common Market Law Review, the Yearbook of European Law, and the European Law Review.
Dr Leonelli regularly contributes evidence to inquiries of the House of Lords International Agreements Committee, the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, and the UK Government. In January 2025, she has been appointed by His Majesty Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to the UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) Joint Working Group. The Group collaborates with HMRC on the development of the UK CBAM policy.
In October 2023, she was invited to give oral evidence to the House of Lords International Agreements Committee regarding the UK accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and its implications for UK levels of food safety and environmental protection. In February 2024, the House of Lords International Agreements Committee drew on her evidence to call on the Government to clarify its approach to the implementation of the CPTPP equivalence procedure. As Dr Leonelli argued, this procedure could be applied in such a way as to undermine the UK precautionary approach to food safety and risk regulation.
Her evidence has been cited by the Commons and the Lords Committees on several other occasions, including in an official letter to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Her research on carbon border measures and climate clubs has fed into policy discussions regarding the G7 blueprint for climate club arrangements. She is a Member of the Trade and Public Policy (TaPP) Network.
Prior to joining LSE, she was Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck, University of London, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Transnational Law Institute, King’s College London. She holds a PhD in Law and an LLM (with Distinction) from King’s College London. Her PhD thesis won the Elsevier Prize for Outstanding Doctoral Work in 2018.