Michele Riondino

Michele Riondino (born 18 May 1978) is an Italian academic and canon law scholar currently based in Sydney, Australia. He was appointed the foundation Professor of Canon Law at Australian Catholic University (ACU) in February 2019, and has been the inaugural Director of ACU’s Canon Law Centre since September 2019. Early life and education Michele Riondino was born and raised in Vittorio Veneto, a small city in the shadow of the Dolomites, northern Italy. The youngest of three siblings, he studied piano as a child and attended St Joseph’s College, where he received a Catholic primary and secondary education. Riondino left home to study law in Milan at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and Carlo Cattaneo University. During this degree he spent one semester as a visiting student at the University of Westminster Law School in London. Riondino obtained his law degree with a thesis on family mediation in Europe. He then moved to Rome to specialise in canon law. Here he undertook a master's degree in science of marriage and family, with a major in canon law, at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. Later, he completed a Bachelor of Philosophy and Bachelor of Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University, during which he spent one year in Granada (Spain), while also attending the School of Theology. Finally, Riondino obtained a PhD in Canon Law (summa cum laude) at the Lateran University, at which time he completed his dissertation, Giustizia riparativa e mediazione nel diritto penale canonico (i.e. “Restorative justice and mediation in the penal law of the Church”), supervised by Prof M. J. Arroba Conde and Prof L. Eusebi. This dissertation, which was published in its entirety, earned Riondino the Sub Auspiciis Lateranensibus prize for 2010’s best doctoral thesis.