Cristina Trenta

Professor Dr. Dr. Cristina Trenta has held the position of Professor of Public Law at Linnaeus University in Sweden since September 1, 2023.  She became the first full installed professor of law at Linnaeus University when the Law Institution was established. Her academic responsibilities include playing a pivotal role in establishing and developing the new legal research environment and the Law Program (Juristprogrammet) at Linnaeus University.

Since October 1, 2024, she has also been appointed as a visiting professor of Public Law at the School of Information Technology, Halmstad University, Sweden. In this role, she focuses on the legal implications of artificial intelligence and serves as the primary supervisor for a PhD student conducting research in the same area.

Prior to this role, she served as an associate professor in law at Örebro University from 2016 to 2023 and as a senior lecturer in tax law at the same university from 2012 to 2016. Additionally, Cristina held a fully funded postdoctoral researcher position at the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from 2009 to 2012. During her time there, she was granted a scholarship to conduct research in the field of peer-to-peer technologies and EU VAT Law.
She holds a PhD in European Tax Law (2007) from the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, and a second distinct PhD in Commercial Law (2013) from Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping, Sweden. Her first PhD dissertation on “VAT and Communication Services” won the European Tax Thesis Award in 2008, a prestigious acknowledgment to innovative research in the field jointly assigned by the European Commission and the European Association of Tax Law Professors. This first PhD dissertation has been also mentioned in the list of the activities of the European Union in the Tax Field in 2008.
Cristina has solid knowledge in the field of European tax law, EU VAT law, tax law and its relations with public law, and gender equality; EU law, IT law, and of the technological aspects related to the distribution of digital content via the internet. She has substantial teaching experience on subjects such as tax law, the digital economy, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sustainable development, in the context of the legal discourse, and research in the interplay between tax law, gender equality, and human rights. I have been also part of a Vinnova project researching digital security and the ethical and legal aspects of AI.
She teaches postgraduate, graduate, and undergraduate courses in these areas and has developed an entirely new course titled “Law, digital technologies and artificial intelligence” which specifically examines the legal aspects of transformation processes driven by AI and autonomous systems. She regularly supervises bachelor’s and master’s theses, as well as doctoral projects, on these topics.
She published the book “Rethinking EU VAT for P2P distribution” in the Kluwer Law International’s EUCOTAX series, and she regularly speaks at conferences on themes connected to EU tax law, technology, and human rights.

In 2023, she signed an agreement with Edward Elgar Publishing for the publication of her next upcoming book titled "Unequal by Policy: EU Tax Law and the Agenda 2030.

In 2024, she has been the thematic reporter on gender equality and EU VAT for the annual European Tax Law Professors conference.

At the end of 2024, she began leading a project as the sole editor of a comprehensive EU VAT Commentary, with contributions from more than 20 authors. The project is expected to be completed in 2027 and published by Edward Elgar Publishing.

She is fluent in three languages: Italian (her mother tongue), English, and Swedish, and she teaches and conducts research in all three. She has also been involved in doctoral-level research using each of these languages.

Her academic expertise is complemented by extensive professional experience. For over twenty years, she served as a jurist for the Italian Tax Administration, representing the authority in tax litigation and judicial proceedings. This long-standing legal practice provides her academic work with a solid grounding in practical legal application.

Teaching

Cristina's teaching and research areas encompass European and international tax law, EU VAT, sustainability, gender equality, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence, with a specific focus on their interplay in the development and upholding of human rights.

Cristine has extensive experience teaching at various universities, conducting courses in English, Swedish, and Italian. These courses have covered a range of legal areas, including EU Law, European Tax Law, European VAT Law, International Tax Law, Sustainable Development and Law, Gender Equality, and Digitalization and Law. Her teaching has extended to multiple countries, including Sweden, Italy, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Australia, and the USA. Over the years, she has delivered more than 10,000 hours of instruction. She has taken on various roles in academia, serving as the course responsible and examiner for numerous undergraduate and graduate courses. She has designed several courses at the bachelor's and master's levels on Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, and Law. 

She has also been involved in teaching courses as part of Erasmus+ and exchange programs.

Furthermore, Cristina has supervised bachelor, magister, and master theses in both Swedish and English.

She has experience in supervising doctoral students in various areas, such as tax law and digital technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, in English, Swedish, and Italian.

Research

The grants awarded total approximately 5,200,000 SEK (EUR 451.360). The largest grant, amounting to 1,500,000 SEK, is for initiating doctoral education for a PhD candidate at Halmstad University in 2024. Following this, the largest individual post-PhD research grants I obtained are the IBFD grant (1,100,000 SEK) and the Torsten Söderberg grant (858,000 SEK), as well as 500,000 SEK from Vinnova for a feasibility study on digital security and ethical artificial intelligence.

As a Guest Professor at Halmstad University, she is serving as a law scholar in a multidisciplinary research project, AI Act Halland. The project supports small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in navigating the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, with a particular focus on the Halland region. Her role is to contribute to the legal and ethical perspectives to the responsible development and deployment of AI.

Her book on "Rethinking EU VAT for P2P Distribution" was published by Kluwer Law International in 2015.

In 2023, she signed an agreement with Edward Elgar Publishing for the publication of her next upcoming book titled "Unequal by Policy: EU Tax Law and the Agenda 2030.

In 2024, she will be one of the thematic reporters on gender equality and tax law for the annual European Tax Law Professors conference.

At the end of 2024, she began leading a project as the sole editor of a comprehensive EU VAT Commentary, with contributions from more than 20 authors. The project is expected to be completed in 2027 and published by Edward Elgar Publishing.

Cristina initiated the research seminar series at the Department of Law, which she named  'The Linnaeus Law Talks'. It serves as a platform for discussing ongoing research within the Department of Law at Linnaeus University, while also inviting external speakers to present on topics relevant to legal scholarship. The Linnaeus Law Talks began its activities in Kalmar in the spring of 2024 with a series of seminars. Since its inception, Cristina has organized and led more than ten research seminars.

Commissions

From 2016 to 2019, Cristina served as an appointed member of the EU Commission's VAT Expert Group, assisting and advising the European Commission on VAT matters.

From 2020 until the end of August 2023, Cristina was appointed by Örebro University as the university's representative on the TOR/Skattenytt Foundation board. The foundation's mission is to advance scientific research in tax law and related legal areas that are significant to tax law.

In 2021, she was appointed as a Member of the Expert Group for the EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy by the European Commission, working on EU digital transformation and the Digital Single Market.

In September 2022, she was reappointed as a member in a personal capacity of the EU Commission’s VAT Expert Group.

Since 2023, she has served as the Department of Law's representative on the Research Council at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Linnaeus University.

In 2025, she joined the group of experts appointed by the European Commission to contribute to a study commissioned by the Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technologies (DG CNECT)  on next-generation digital technologies and their role in future strategies and capabilities for Europe.

In 2025, she has been appointed as an affiliate researcher at the AI-Econ Lab, at Örebro University, an international and multidisciplinary center focusing on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the nature of work.

In July 2025, she was appointed by the Skattenytt Foundation as Sweden’s deputy representative to the European Association of Tax Law Professors (EATLP). The EATLP is a professional organization of tenured, full professors who teach tax law at universities across Europe.