Her first area of research concerns historical semantics and pragmatics, as documented in her publications in the past 15 years, particularly on the role of lexical semantics in interaction with pragmatic factors in driving semantic change.
Her second area of research concerns comparative analysis of legal texts and legal translation within the EU context, as reflected in her participation in the Rete di Eccellenza dell’Italiano Istituzionale (European Commission), the Società Italiana per la Ricerca in Diritto comparato, the Verein zur Förderung der Europäischen Rechtslinguistik and in her other publications in the past fifteen years.
Both research programmes have attracted considerable large-scale funding, notably by the Fonds National pour la Recherche Suisse (1994-1995), the European Commission (1995-1997), the British Academy (1999, 2001), the Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (2003-2006 and 2006-2012), the Accademia dei Lincei (2006), the Centro Nazionale per le Ricerche (2009), the European Commission (2012-2013), Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (2013-2016), Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst DAAD (2014), European Science Foundation (2014-2018).