Pellegrino, Giuseppina | Italy
Research Interests
Science and Technology Studies with particular reference to Information and Communication Technologies in organizational settings; mobility, technological mediation and mobile communication; media studies; media and everyday life; organization studies; technologies and knowledge in scientific laboratories; gender and communication.
Employement
Since 2006: Lecturer in Sociology of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Calabria (Italy).
2005: Postdoc fellow, Department of Sociology and Political Science, University of Calabria, (Italy). Research project in Sociology of Culture and Communication on “Adoption of new technologies in the enterprise”.
Education and Research
2007: Visiting Fellow in Sociology, Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe), Lancaster Univeristy, director prof. John Urry (February-March).
2004: Ph.D in Science Technology and Society (Department of Sociology and Political Science, University of Calabria, Italy). Thesis on “The Intranet: social construction and appropriation of technology in two organizational contexts (Italy - UK)” (Advisor Prof. Paolo Jedlowski).
2002: Visiting Ph. D worker at RCSS (Research Centre in Social Sciences), Department of Sociology - University of Edinburgh UK (April – June; September – December).
2000-2003: Ph. D studentship in “Science Technology and Society” at the Department of Sociology and Political Science, University of Calabria, Italy.
1998: BA cum laude (Communication Studies, focused on Management of Institutional and Corporate Communication) – University of Siena (Italy). Degree thesis: “Teleworking - comparison of five companies” (Advisor: Prof. Peppino Ortoleva).
Project at IAS-STS: Mobilities and Technological Mediation - Interaction, co-presence and ubiquitous infrastructures in international consultants’ work
The research project aims to analyze the technological dimension of mobility, and its role in the everyday life of individuals and organizations. In particular, some trends are considered of relevance to the study. The scenario is that of multiple mobilities, overlapping each other: corporeal mobility, mobility of information and discourses, mobility of cultures and identities, mobility of technological artefacts.
One of the trends addressed by the project is the diffusion of mobile/ubiquitous technological devices. Individuals as users must cope with miniaturization and portability of technologies and information services associated with them. They are expected to affect perception and experience of time and space, which seems to be oriented less and less by a clear distinction between work and leisure time, public and private space. As a consequence, the relationship between what is ‘work’ and what is ‘non-work’ needs to be redefined.
Mobile technologies represent an open laboratory into which individual and organizational actors experiment different behaviours to cope with very advanced technological artefacts.
The central hypothesis argues that mobility depends on sociotechnical processes which make artefacts more and more convergent, multi-functional and pocketable (e.g. smart phones). On other hand, individuals and environments are saturated - literally filled up - with technologies. They are co-extensive to them. Such a saturation makes both the body and the environment hybrid, and the distinction between what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘artificial’ more and more conventional. Therefore, there is a continuum between bodies and environments, which brings about new forms of co-presence and sociality, transforming old practices through new media.
Ubiquity as aspiration to omnipresence, therefore, is embedded into discourses and artefacts supposed to be mobile and ubiquitous, that means accessible anywhere anytime (at least in principle). The myth of ubiquitous computing as invisible, unobtrusive infrastructure embedded into material surfaces founds a prolific literature. Moreover, it is exemplary of a trend to imagine and design contexts of interaction, both public and private, where materiality of technology is redefined.
The project focuses on mobile workers’ practices looking at old and new technologies which make work, communication and interaction at a distance ubiquitous (in a larger sense than in the so called ‘ubiquitous computing’). It is assumed the co-existence of older and newer ubiquitous devices (e.g. paper as basic medium to transfer symbolic forms does not disappear because of mobile phones). The main focus during the visiting period at IAS-STS will be on ubiquity in the media, designers and institutions’ rhetoric. In particular, the objective is to compare mobility and ubiquity as experienced by mobile workers, with the perspective proposed by designers of ubiquitous environments and devices.
Selected Publications
Rhetoric, practice and context-sensitivity in sociotechnical action: The Compass case, in Stahl, B.C. (ed.) “Advanced Topics in Technology and Human Interaction, vol. 1, Idea Group Publishing, pp. 172-193.
Discourses on Mobility and Technological Mediation: The Texture of Ubiquitous Interaction, in “PsychNology”, 5(1), pp. 59-81
Ubiquity and pervasivity: on the technological mediation of (mobile) everyday life, in Berleur, J. Nurminen , M.I. and Impagliazzo, J. (Eds.) Social Informatics: An Information Society for all? In remembrance of Rob Kling. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol. 223, Springer, pp. 133-144.
Thickening the frame: Cross-theoretical accounts of contexts inside and around technology, in “Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society”, 25 (1), 63-72.
Misunderstandings around the artifact: a KMS failure story, in “International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction”, 1 (3), July-September, 15-28.
With Linderoth, H. Frames and inscriptions: tracing a way to understand IT-dependent change projects, in “International Journal of Project Management” (23), 415-420.
Memberships:
Italian Sociological Association, research committees ‘Everyday life” and ‘Cultural Processes and Institutions’ (since 2005).
STS Italy – the Italian Society for Social Studies of Science and Technology (since 2005, Board Secretary since 2007).
International Sociological Association, Research Committees 07 (Futures Research) and 14 (Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture) since 2006.
International Institute of Sociology since 2008.