ResearchI came into Science and Technology Studies via Media and Communications Studies. My training in these fields has taught me that media technologies, and technoscience more in general, are not neutral. From Feminist Technoscience Studies I have learned that technoscience is biased in many respects, and that the production of knowledge as well as the design of technological artifacts is deeply entangled in gender and other sociocultural categories and identity markers such as sexuality, class, ethnicity, (dis)ability. Therefore, sociotechnical systems can reproduce or challenge social exclusions. Participatory design has showed me meaningful examples and tools whereby it is possible to put these theoretical concerns and sensibilities in practice, understanding design and technology as interventions towards ethical praxis.
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Grassroots Radio
The Grassroots Radio project (2017-2020) aimed to pilot solutions to support community information and deliberation. More specifically it aimed to:
- Lower the barriers to start and sustain a community radio station;
- Increase the permeability of community radio stations by leveraging existing digital and non-digital infrastructure;
- Create regional and European-wide networks of stations that can pool community-level resources;
- Co-innovate collaborative media services and business models that are bottom-up and can sustain media and peer-production services in the long-run in line with social innovation principles.
Importantly, the project aimed to enable community members, through the use of radio as a grassroot peer production platform, to have a voice on local issues, topics, and concerns of value to them. The project is employing an open platform called RootIO, which can be used by community members to broadcast over FM using any basic phone. The project was deployed in six rural and remote communities across Ireland, including Bere Island and the Islands on the southwest of Ireland, two communities in the Island of Madeira in Portugal, and two communities in the Danube Delta in Romania. Often called “peripheral,” these communities are typically not considered epicenters of new technology development. The needs for communication are no less in such communities, though they are different.
Grassroots Radio brought together engineers, social scientists, artists, designers, and communities across nine organizations spanning five countries. The Grassroots Radio project was funded through the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 framework, under the forward-looking Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation Programme.
I worked in this project as co-coordinator of the work package on Communication, Dissemination and Public Engagement. My responsibilities and work concerned: coordinating project activities related to communication, dissemination and public Engagement; coordinating the work package consortium meetings; writing scientific papers and project reports; managing the project Facebook and Twitter page; managing the project official website; writing and development of project press releases, factsheets, and newsletters; writing project deliverables and milestones; organization of project events.
Grassroots Radio brought together engineers, social scientists, artists, designers, and communities across nine organizations spanning five countries. The Grassroots Radio project was funded through the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 framework, under the forward-looking Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation Programme.
I worked in this project as co-coordinator of the work package on Communication, Dissemination and Public Engagement. My responsibilities and work concerned: coordinating project activities related to communication, dissemination and public Engagement; coordinating the work package consortium meetings; writing scientific papers and project reports; managing the project Facebook and Twitter page; managing the project official website; writing and development of project press releases, factsheets, and newsletters; writing project deliverables and milestones; organization of project events.
Commonfare
Commonfare (2016-2019) was a European participatory design project that aims to confront societal challenges such as low income, precariousness and unemployment as a result of the crisis of traditional welfare systems and growing social inequalities. The project sought to make visible and support practices of collective and individual empowerment, autonomous life, and collaboration through the design of a digital platform – commonfare.net. Research participants include unemployed youth, precarious workers, non-European migrants and freelancers – in three pilot countries (Croatia, Italy, The Netherlands).
Specifically, commonfare.net pursues three goals: (1) to inform about welfare state benefits; (2) to map and connect existing welfare initiatives based on social cooperation and mutual-aid; (3) to build a complementary monetary and financial circuit to ensure economic sustainability and the free development of grassroots welfare “good practices”.
I worked in the Commonfare project throughout its duration as Postdoctoral Researcher in Participatory Design and Public Engagement. My responsibilities and work concerned: writing scientific papers and project reports; attending scientific conferences and other academic events; managing the project Facebook page; developing contents for the commonfare.net platform; writing and development of project press releases, factsheets, and newsletters; organizing project events; writing of grant proposals.
I worked in the Commonfare project throughout its duration as Postdoctoral Researcher in Participatory Design and Public Engagement. My responsibilities and work concerned: writing scientific papers and project reports; attending scientific conferences and other academic events; managing the project Facebook page; developing contents for the commonfare.net platform; writing and development of project press releases, factsheets, and newsletters; organizing project events; writing of grant proposals.
StemFem
StemFem (2015-2018) was an interdisciplinary project based at the Department of Social Sciences and Economics at Sapienza University of Rome. The project investigated the scientific and technical educational paths as well as the professional careers of women in the light of gender issues. The research combined a diverse set of intellectual and academic traditions: social sciences, science and technology studies (STS), gender studies, history of science and technology. The project approached STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) as domains socially (re)produced through technoscientific and gender practices.
Troubling binary codes: studying Information Technology at the intersection
of Science and Technology Studies and Feminist Technoscience Studies
My PhD dissertation provides a study of Information Technology (IT) as professional and technical culture. It draws together the theoretical lenses of Feminist Technoscience Studies (FTS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). This topic is investigated through an empirical research that focuses on two distinct issues. The first one concerns the gender gap and underrepresentation of women in IT educational and professional paths (computer science, computer engineering, computing); the second one investigates the role of digital artifacts and materiality in the process of organizing within an Italian telecommunication company. Regarding the first issue, I carried out a historical analysis of the experience of the first female coders in early digital computing era. Furthermore, I conducted a set of interviews with Italian female IT professionals who participate in networks and campaigns that promote women’s presence and gender awareness in computing. Drawing on contributions from STS and feminist socio-constructivist approaches in science and technology, it is argued that the analysis of gender divide in IT should go beyond the issues of female discrimination in order to call into question the gendered nature of computer artifacts and technical knowledge.
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In the second field site, I investigated the alleged neutral character of technical artifacts and materiality through an organizational ethnography by drawing on contributions from STS and Workplace Studies. Starting from this body of knowledge which calls into question the very boundaries between the social and the technical, I employed analytic sensibilities from feminist technoscience and the debate on new materialism in feminist theory to trace out the agential role of materiality and technical objects in producing marginal and invisible positions. Hence, it is argued that technical knowledge and non-human actors take part in politics and practices of boundary-making, sustaining divisions and hierarchies.
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