Letizia Chiappini

Letizia was an Urban Citizen Fellow at NIAS 2024-2025.

I am a Distinguished Urban Fellow at NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences) for the year 2024-25. At UT I am an Assistant Professor of Digitalisation and Sustainability and an urban sociologist interested in critical approaches to the notion of smart city and platformisation as a process. My work critiques dominant and extractive platform-driven digital markets, thus I propose the concept of 'urban digital platform' to analyse platforms that support grassroots initiatives and practices of resistance. Other projects investigate artistic practices related to digital fabrication and makerspaces as an alternative mode of spatial production. My main research interests focus on comparing different contexts, while also exploring alternative approaches that focus on socio-economic justice and sustainability. My research interests revolve around these broad themes and approaches: 

- Feminist, queer, anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives on digital platforms
- Digitalisation, governance, urban politics
- Participation and co-creation in grassroots communities
- Making, FabLab, digital fabrication, craft and artistic practices
- Social justice, radical and counter-action
- Open source, data and practices of democracy and digitalisation

I primarily use qualitative ethnographic and participatory methods, as well as digital methodologies, GIS mapping, digital ethnography, UX walkthrough methods. I collaborate and engage as an activist with arts communities both in Italy and the Netherlands. I am co-founder of the collective Slutty Urbanism, part of the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale - Architettura (2020-2021). I write for various media, magazines and academic journals.

Before joining the University of Twente in June 2023, I was a lecturer in research methods at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (2019-2023) and a visiting professor at the TU-Wien, within the Master of Architecture and Visual Cultures (2022). I hold a PhD in Sociology and Urban Studies, joint doctoral programme, from the University of Milan-Bicocca and the University of Amsterdam. I have an MA in Sociology from the University of Milan-Bicocca and Aalborg University (Erasmus Plus) and a BA in Literature and Philosophy from the University of Parma.