Michele Nori is a Tropical Agronomist (University of Florence – IT) with a further specialisation in Rural Sociology (PhD at Wageningen University – NL). With about 20 years of field experience on the technical as well as socio-economic aspects of natural resource management in different regions of the world (mostly Africa, but also Asia and LatinAmerica), where he has mainly dealt with the livelihood systems of pastoral communities. By intensively working at the interface between academic, field as decision-making levels, he has developed an ‘horizontal career’, based on collaborations with and consultancies to a number of organisations at different levels: civil society, UN agencies, research institutes, donors offices as well as the European Commission Development Cooperation and EU Delegations. His list of publications ranges from scientific papers to technical notes to advocacy documents on matters relates to sustainable pastoralism. His current concern is to adequately inform policy decision-making on aspects of rural development, food security and natural resource management in the Mediterranean region – a domain where migrations plays an increasingly important role. He has been awarded a Marie Curie fellowship to investigate on the increasingly relevant role of immigrant shepherds for the sustainability of pastoral systems in Mediterranean EU countries – a specific case study within the debate about migrants’ contributions to farming and rural development in Europe.Michele Nori is a Tropical Agronomist (University of Florence – IT) with a further specialisation in Rural Sociology (PhD at Wageningen University – NL). With about 20 years of field experience on the technical as well as socio-economic aspects of natural resource management in different regions of the world (mostly Africa, but also Asia and LatinAmerica), where he has mainly dealt with the livelihood systems of pastoral communities. By intensively working at the interface between academic, field as decision-making levels, he has developed an ‘horizontal career’, based on collaborations with and consultancies to a number of organisations at different levels: civil society, UN agencies, research institutes, donors offices as well as the European Commission Development Cooperation and EU Delegations. His list of publications ranges from scientific papers to technical notes to advocacy documents on matters relates to sustainable pastoralism. His current concern is to adequately inform policy decision-making on aspects of rural development, food security and natural resource management in the Mediterranean region – a domain where migrations plays an increasingly important role. He has been awarded a Marie Curie fellowship to investigate on the increasingly relevant role of immigrant shepherds for the sustainability of pastoral systems in Mediterranean EU countries – a specific case study within the debate about migrants’ contributions to farming and rural development in Europe.