Dr. Maria Ventura holds a Master's degree in German Philology (with additional History and Geography) and a PhD in Educational Science from the University of Innsbruck. She has been teaching German, History and Geography at a secondary school since 2000. From 2009 to 2012 she worked as a coordinator for history education at the Department for Innovation and Counseling in Bozen-Bolzano. As a textbook author, she contributed to the series "Zeitreise für Südtirol", published by Klett Verlag, which is now in its third edition (2017). "Zeitreise" won the Textbook of the Year Award at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2012 and the Worlddidactic Award in Bern, Switzerland in 2016. Her research focuses on inclusion in education, history didactics, and the use of new media in teaching. She has presented at international conferences in Estonia, Lithuania, Israel, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Spain. Since 2016, she has been a lecturer at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, where she specializes in inclusion, pedagogy, history didactics, and anthropological topics, and conducts workshops for future educators.