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Let’s talk about you: what is your background, what do you teach, and what are your research interests?
My name is Marco Ticozzi and I teach Private and Environmental Law at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. I’m also a lawyer in Venice and Treviso. My research revolves around obligations and contracts. In recent years I have been focusing on a specific category: financial obligations, as well as the ones linked to banking (interests, compound interests, usury and more).
I also run a blog that provides juridical information, in which I publish detailed studies of the plethora of issues I happen to come across as a lawyer and as a university professor.

What has given you the greatest satisfaction in your career?
I get the greatest satisfaction thanks to the positive feedback I receive from my students. It’s not easy to maintain ‘personal’ relations when teaching courses that involve hundreds of students — however, I always try to be available to them and to answer their requests as fast as I can.
When I’m in the classroom, I try to be as clear as possible, repeating the main topics from different perspectives, avoiding over-analysis, using concrete examples and referencing previous lectures for practical examples.
So yes, receiving personal thanks from my students is always the most gratifying experience, as well as getting positive feedback from the online questionnaires that highlight my clarity and availability. On the basis of this feedback, I was placed in the top three lecturers at Ca’ Foscari in 2017, out of over 500 teachers.

Have you always known that this was going to be your path?
My academic path was not something I was expecting. I was doing my internship to become a lawyer and I had the opportunity to enrol in a doctorate programme at Ca’ Foscari. It was a highly formative experience and that’s when I became very interested in research first, and then in teaching. It’s an activity I truly appreciate and it’s gratifying, so I’m really grateful that it happened by chance.

Can you offer any advice to researchers in the early stages of their career?
I usually recommend engaging in university research, as well as enrolling in a doctoral programme. It’s an experience that tests your skills and is highly stimulating: the tools you acquire during this time are useful for any profession in the juridical field that you might end up choosing. And I think this applies to other fields of research, too.