Emanuela Orlando is Associate Professor in Environmental Law at Sussex Law School, which she joined in 2013. She was previously Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge and affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge. She holds law degrees from the University of Siena (LLB), the University of Oxford (MJur in European and Comparative law), and the European University Institute (PhD).

Prior to fully engaging in the academic career, Emanuela practiced law in major international law firms in Rome, worked for the European Commission, and as legal adviser for the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea (IMELS) in the framework of its bilateral cooperation activities in the Balkan countries.

She has researched and published extensively on the question of environmental liability, environmental governance and enforcement of environmental law, and environmental principles.

She co-edited, together with Professor Ludwig Kramer, the volume on Principles of Environmental Law which was published in 2018 as part of the IUCN Academy/Edward Elgar Encyclopaedia of Environmental Law.

Her monograph Environmental Liability and the Interplay between EU Law and International Law (Routledge 2023) provides an in-depth analysis of environmental liability regimes in international law and within the EU, and explores the extent to which the reciprocal interaction between the EU and the international legal order may enhance the effectiveness of remedies for environmental harm. 

Emanuela is a member of the editorial board of the German Law Journal; it is a member of the Avosetta network of environmental law scholars; and has been appointed for the second time as part of the College of Experts for the Office of Environmental Protection (OEP) .