Elisabetta Ferrari

Elisabetta Ferrari was previously Assistant Professor – AIAS-AUFF Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) at Aarhus University (Denmark). She is a member of the Young Academy for Cultures and Societies Research at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her 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 think about and use digital media – and how this plays a role in their struggles for social justice.

Her first book, Appropriate, negotiate, challenge: Activist imaginaries and the politics of digital technologies (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. The book won the 2026 Outstanding Book Award from the Activism, Communication and Social Justice (ACSJ) Division of the International Communication Association (ICA); the dissertation on which the book is based won the 2020 Dissertation Award from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR).