Marcella Lorenzini is Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Milan (Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods) and Honorary Research Fellow at The Bartlett School of Construction & Project Management, UCL. She received her PhD in Economic History from the University of Milan. Her research explores the evolution of financial and social institutions in pre-industrial and nineteenth-century Europe. Her work focuses in particular on the development of credit markets in the absence of formal institutions, with specific emphasis on the intermediary role of notaries in the Early Modern period and women's participation and agency in private credit markets. Her interdisciplinary approach combines quantitative methods with archival research to shed light on the informal mechanisms that shaped economic development before the emergence of modern banking.