The Importance of Biocultural Diversity

Andrea Pieroni is an associate professor of food botany, ethnobotany and Ethnobiology at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (Italy). Andrea is also the academic coordinator of the international post-graduate Master´s program in Pollenzo. Trained in Medical Botany (Pharmacognosy) at the University of Pisa (Italy), University of Antwerp (Belgium), and at the University of Bonn (Germany), he has been Research Assistant at the University of London since 2000, and was appointed as Lecturer (and, later as Senior Lecturer) at the University of Bradford in northern England in 2003, where he remained until 2009. Andrea has been the President of the International Society of Ethnobiology (2010) and he is since 2005 the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine and a member of the boards of several international ethnoscientific associations and peer-reviewed publications. He has also been the P.I. of the first collaborative research project funded by the EU Commission focused on traditional plant knowledge in the Mediterranean (RUBIA, 2003-2006).