Emanuela Appetiti graduated in Sociology, with a specialization in Ethno-Anthropology, at La Sapienza University (Rome, Italy, 1987).

She gained experience and professional expertise in public and media relations as press officer and client liaison at the auction house Christie’s Italy in Rome. Fluent in Italian (mother tongue), English, French, and Spanish, she is a member of the editorial board of several international scientific journals, and the editor of the quarterly e-newsletter of the International Society for the History of Medicine. 

She is the President and CEO of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions (Washington, DC, USA), which she founded in 2007 with Alain Touwaide, with whom she has been sharing a nomadic life and a passion for science for the past 25  years.

When not doing research abroad, they live in the United States, mostly in Washington, DC, and in Los Angeles.

A strong interest in hunter-gatherers led her to concentrate the research on Australian Aborigines, especially their traditional medicine.

For the past twenty years, she has become increasingly focused on the history of medicine and ethnobotany, dividing her interests among Australian Aboriginal traditional medicine and the transmission of knowledge on the uses of medicinal plants in the ancient Mediterranean world.