Nadia Olivero works at the intersection of Cognitive and Behavioural Sciences and Human-centred Innovation. Her research explores how cognitive, emotional, and contextual processes shape human judgment, trust, decision-making, and behaviour in technologically mediated environments.

She holds a PhD from University College London in Social Psychology and Human Behaviour in Digital Environments. Her doctoral research examined conversational self-disclosure, privacy negotiation, and perceived control in emerging digital interactions for the design of automated software agents, anticipating several questions that are now central to AI-mediated systems and conversational technologies. 

Her latest research focus is concerned with the development of AI based Digital Twins. Her recent collaborations include projects with Drexel University (US) on the application of behavioural sciences to legal and regulatory debates concerning consumer protection, privacy, and artificial intelligence, and with Intesa Sanpaolo on explainable large language models, human oversight, and AI-supported decision systems.

She was Principal Investigator of the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship with the project REXPIRE – RFID Consumer Experience in the Retail Environment, funded by the European Commission and conducted at University College London, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). The project investigated consumer experience, emotions, privacy negotiation, and behavioural adaptation within technologically mediated retail environments.

She was also Principal Investigator of the ESRC -for UK Innovation- funded project CAPRI – Consumer-Centred Contextualised Approach for Retail Innovation, developed in partnership with Sainsbury’s, NCR Corporation, AIMIA, and University College London. Within the project, she coordinated a multidisciplinary team of researchers working on context-aware, mobile applications and location-based technologies for the analysis of behavioural responses, purchase intentions, and large-scale behavioural and contextual data analytics in digitally augmented environments.

Her previous research also includes nationally funded projects on digital piracy and online consumer behaviour. As head of unity of the Italian PRIN research project Piracy versus Willingness to Pay for Digital Content, she investigated moral disengagement, social norms, behavioural rationalization, and decision-making processes underlying illegal downloading and digital consumption practices in online environments.

Earlier research also investigated multisensory cognition and the behavioural effects of sensory stimuli in experiential environments, including the implementation of experimental olfactory research infrastructures and large-scale scent stimulation projects  for Autogrill S.p.A. 

She has been a member of several doctoral committees, currently in the doctoral committee of Business For Society of the University of Milan Bicocca, a Research Fellow at UCL,  previously at the Warwick Policy Lab of the University of Warwick and at the NCR Lab  (London, UK), academic advisor to UCL startups at UCL Business, currently in the scientific and steering committee of the Promostudi Foundation, and the scientific director of Maref at the University of Milan-Bicocca.

She has given talks in numerous universities and research centres (e.g. London Business School, UCL, LSE, Federal University of Rio De Janeiro, Warwik University, University of Japan) .Her work is regularly featured in the media. Traditional coverage include FT, The Guardian, La Repubblica, RAI, HSBC.