My name is Elisabetta Ferrari. I am an Assistant Professor – AIAS-AUFF Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) at Aarhus University (Denmark). I am an Affiliate of the American Studies Center Aarhus. I was previously a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Media in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow (UK). 

I am a member of the Young Academy for Cultures and Societies Research at the University of Freiburg, Germany. In 2023/2024 I was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany. 

My research addresses the social and political implications of digital technologies, with an emphasis on activism, social movements, and social justice. In general, my work explores how people use and think about digital media – and how this plays a role in their struggles for social justice.

My first book (University of California Press, 2024) examines how contemporary leftist activist groups in Italy, Hungary and the United States constructed their own technological imaginaries to appropriate, negotiate or challenge Silicon Valley’s dominant techno-optimist ideas; my book highlights the political and contested nature of the ideas we hold about technology, and their connection to social change. My dissertation, on which the book is based, won the 2020 Dissertation Award from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). I have also developed a drawing-based research method, the visual focus group, through which I seek to facilitate conversations about the politics of technology and encourage civil society actors to imagine better digital technologies. I am currently working on a comparative project on Covid-19 mutual aid activism, which has received funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant scheme. My research been published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at major conferences, and has received awards and competitive funding.

I am the Vice-Chair of the Activism, Communication and Social Justice (ACSJ) Division of the International Communication Association (ICA). Between 2021 and 2024 I served as Secretary of the Interest Group.

I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Studies Institute, University of Michigan (2020/2021) and at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania (2019/2020), where I remain a Research Affiliate. I gained my PhD in Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. I also hold a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Bologna (Italy) and an M.A. in Political Science, with a specialization in Political Communication, from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary).

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