Governance of and by data infrastructures

Principal Investigator - Prof. ssa Annalisa Pelizza

Brief description

This research group is composed by scholars at diverse stages of their career path and with research focuses from data to food infrastructures, from smart urbanism to identification technologies for population and territory management. Notable, we all adopt a performative approach to infrastructures, seen as methodological resources as well as agencies shaping and being shaped by sociotechnical actors, organizations and institutions.

Notably, our research investigates governance of emerging infrastructures, technology assessment and responsible research and innovation (RRI), as well as governance by infrastructures, such as data infrastructures (e.g., “code politics” or “code as law”), urban and climate transitioning infrastructures, food infrastructures, AI, etc.

ERC sectors

• SH2
• SH3
• SH7

The research of this group is supported by competitive and excellent science funding lines, such as:

• European Research Council, HORIZON 2020 ERC, PROCESSING CITIZENSHIP: Digital registration of migrants as co-production of citizens, territory and Europe. This project studies how data infrastructures for third-country nationals management shape modern institutions and the European order.
• Marie Slodowska Curie Actions, HORIZON 2020 MSCA Global Fellowship, INFRATIME: Infrastructuring Time in Smart Urbanism and Urban Transitions. This project studies the governance of and by infrastructures in climate change and the Anthropocene, investigating urban, ecological, and digital transitions through a temporal perspective.
• PON, Corona Food: Feeding the City under COVID19. This project aims to capture the ways in which cities are working to address the economic and social impacts caused by Covid‐19 in the food system.
• IFRIS (Institut Francilien Recherche Innovation Société) Postdoctoral research grant, Please, draw me an interconnection! Governing (personal) data to ensure sovereignty in Europe.

Some representative publications

• Pelizza, A. and Hoppe, R. (2018), ‘Birth of a Failure: Consequences of framing ICT projects for the centralization of inter-departmental relations’, Administration and Society, 50(1): 101–130. DOI: 10.1177/0095399715598343
• Pelizza, A. (2016), ‘Developing the Vectorial Glance: Infrastructural inversion for the new agenda on governmental information systems’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 41(2): 298-321. DOI: 10.1177/0162243915597478
• Pelizza, A. (2016), ‘Disciplining Change, Displacing Frictions. Two structural dimensions of digital circulation across land registry database integration’, Tecnoscienza. Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies, 7(2): 35-60

Other group members (outside Unibo)

Paul Trauttmansdorff

Laurène Le Cozanet (EHESS Paris)

Wouter Van Rossem (University of Twente)

Related web site(s)

https://processingcitizenship.eu/

https://infratime.eu/

Selection of recent publications

• Coletta C (2021). “The Heartbeat Of Fieldwork. On Doing Ethnography In Traffic Control Rooms.” In: (a cura di): Symon Gillian Prichard Katrina Hine Christine, Research Methods for Digital Work and Organization: Investigating Distributed, Multi-Modal, and Mobile Work. Pp. 87-104, GBR:Oxford University Press
• Coletta C., Rohl T., Wagenknecht S. (2020). “On time: temporal and normative orderings of mobilities.” Mobilities, vol. 15, pp. 635-646, doi: 10.1080/17450101.2020.1805958
• Coletta C, Kitchin R (2017). “Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things.” Big Data & Society, vol. 4, pp. 1-16, doi: 10.1177/2053951717742418
• Cretella A., (2019). “Alternative food and the urban institutional agenda: Challenges and insights from Pisa”, Journal of Rural Studies, 69, 117-129.
• Cretella A., (2019) Between promise and practice. Exploring the politics of urban food strategies in European cities. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. ISBN:978-94-6380-328-1.
• Davies, A., Cretella, A., Edwards, F., & Marovelli, B. (2020). “The social practices of hosting P2P social dining events: insights for sustainable tourism”, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1-16.
• Davies A., Cretella A., Frank V., (2019) “Urban food sharing and food democracy: practice, place and policy in three European cities”, Politics and Governance, 7 (4), 8-20.
• Kitchin R, Coletta C, McArdle G (2020). “Governmentality and urban control.” In: (a cura di): Willis Katharine Aurigi Alessandro, The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities. Pp. 109-122, London: Routledge
• Kitchin R, Coletta C, Evans, L Heaphy L, Mac Donncha D (2019). “Smart cities, algorithmic technocracy and new urban technocrats.” In: (a cura di): Raco M Savini F, Planning and Knowledge. How New Forms of Technocracy Are Shaping Contemporary Cities. Pp. 199-212, GBR:Policy Press
• Loschi C., Slominski P. (2022) “The EU hotspot approach in Italy: Strengthening agency governance in the wake of the migration crisis?”, Journal of European Integration. DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2022.2047186. Open Access.
• Loschi C. (2021) “Youth as agenda-setters between donors and beneficiaries. The limited role of Libyan youth after 2011”, Middle East Law & Governance 13:1, 49-71. DOI: 10.1163/18763375-13010003.
• Olivieri, L. (2021). Persuasive Technologies and Self-awareness: A Discussion of Screen-time Management Applications. Phenomenology and Mind, (20), 52-61.
• Olivieri, L. and Pelizza, A. (2021), ‘The Ambivalence of Platforms: Between Surveillance and Resistance in the Management of Vulnerable Populations’, Tecnoscienza. Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies, 12 (2).
• Pelizza, A. (2021), ‘Identification as Translation: The art of choosing the right spokespersons at the securitized border’, Social Studies of Science, 51(4): 487–511. DOI: 10.1177/0306312720983932 (2020 Impact Factor 4.038)
• Pelizza, A. (2021), ‘Towards a sociomaterial approach to inter-organizational boundaries. How information systems elicit relevant knowledge in government outsourcing’, Journal of Information Technology, 36(2): 94–108. DOI: 10.1177/0268396220934490 (2020 Impact Factor 3.625).
• Pelizza, A. (2020), ‘Processing Alterity, Enacting Europe. Migrant registration and identification as co-construction of individuals and polities’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 45(2): 262–288. DOI: 10.1177/0162243919827927 (2020 5-year Impact Factor 3.160)
• Pelizza, A. and Van Rossem, W. (2021), ‘Sensing European Alterity. An analogy between sensors and Hotspots in transnational security networks’, in Klimburg-Witjes, N., Pöchhacker, N. and Bowker, G.C. (Eds.), Sensing In/Security: Sensors as Transnational Security Infrastructure. Manchester: Mattering Press. (Peer-reviewed)
• Trauttmansdorff, Paul, and Ulrike Felt. 2021. “Between Infrastructural Experimentation and Collective Imagination: The Digital Transformation of the EU Border Regime.” Science, Technology, & Human Values, November. doi:10.1177/01622439211057523.
• Trauttmansdorff, Paul. 2017. “The Politics of Digital Borders.” In Border Politics. Defining Spaces of Governance and Forms of Transgressions, edited by Cengiz Günay and Nina Witjes, 107–26. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-46855-6_7.
• Van Rossem, W. and Pelizza, A. (forthcoming), ‘The Ontology Explorer: A method to make visible data infrastructures for population management’, Big Data & Society, published online ahead of printing. (2022 Impact Factor 5.987)