Karen Martini obtained her Bachelor Degree in Italian Language and Literature at the University of Bologna (graduated with honors in July 2012) and her Master Degree in Linguistics, Persuasive Communication, Technology and Cognitive Studies at the University of Siena. She graduated with honors in Mars 2015 with the dissertation Locality and intervention effects in an Italian aphasic speaker.

She is currently pursuing her PhD in language acquisition under the supervision of Adriana Belletti, as part of the ERC-funded project SynCart (Syntactic Cartography and Locality in Adult Grammar and in Language Acquisition; PI Luigi Rizzi). Her research deals with A-bar dependencies in first language acquisition and focuses on intervention effects of the Relativized Minimality type put forth in Rizzi 2004 and Friedmann et al. 2009.