Maria Chiara Locchi is part of WP6 in the MORE4WATER project.

She is an Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law at the University of Perugia. Her research and teaching activities focus on comparative public law, with particular attention to Islamic legal systems, migration law, cultural diversity, and legal pluralism. She holds a PhD in History, Politics, and Institutions of the Euro-Mediterranean Area in the Contemporary Age from the University of Macerata, where she explored immigration law in the Euro-Mediterranean region, analyzing the legal frameworks governing the entry of non-EU foreigners into Italian and European territories. 

While a researcher at the University of Perugia, she led and contributed to various national and international research projects. She was the Principal Investigator of the PRINTEG – Rights Behind Bars in Europe project, funded by the SIR 2014 program, which examined the rights of detained migrants and their integration prospects in European legal systems. She has actively participated in UDEL 21(Erasmus+), focused on the role of diversity in education, and multiple PRIN and Jean Monnet initiatives addressing legal pluralism, migration law, and climate governance. She is currently involved in several national and European projects, including MORE4WATER and Eco-Poleis, a Jean Monnet Module on the integration between local climate governance and deliberative/participatory democracy. 

Committed to international academic collaboration, she co-directs the International Joint Master’s Program in Transnational Migration Law, organized in partnership with Universidade do Vale do Itajaí (UNIVALI) in Brazil. Additionally, she is a member of the Doctoral Board of the PhD Program in Legal Sciences at the University of Perugia. 

Her scholarly work includes numerous publications in leading national and international journals, as well as two monographs: one on the legal status of migrants and another on the regulation of religiously-oriented political parties. Her research interests span citizenship and migration law, constitutional rights of foreigners, the intersection of legal pluralism and intercultural law, the role of religion in environmental law.