School of Social and Political Science

Background

I earned a PhD in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 2023. I have a MScRes in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Edinburgh (2019), and a Master in Philosophy from the University of Turin (2016). Prior to my PostDoctoral Fellowship, I was a DCMS Policy Fellow under the AHRC Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) programme, and a Teaching Fellow in Ethical Data Futures (Edinburgh Futures Institute).

My PhD dissertation 'Seeing affect: knowledge infrastructures in facial expression recognition systems' has received an SPS Outstanding Dissertation Award (2023) and the AsSIST-UK Andrew Webster PhD Prize (2024).

Teaching

Postgraduate

Data and AI Ethics as Practice (2025; 2026)

Data Ethics in Health and Social Care (2024)

Ethical Data Futures (2023)

Past students

Oksana Dorofeeva (visiting PhD student, Aarhus University)

Jacqueline Rowe, Amanda Horzyka, Osman Batur Ince, and Cyndie Demeocq (project supervision, Center for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing)

Sandra Wheeler (MSc in Data Science for Health and Social Care)

Publications

Journal Articles

Bennett, SJ, Catanzariti, B., Emah, I. and J. Garforth (under review) "Synthetic Data as Alt-Real World-Making in Medicine."

Catanzariti, B. (2025) "Taming Affect: On the Construction of Objectivity in Data Annotation Practices." Digit. Soc. 4, 40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44206-025-00198-3 

Bennett, S., Catanzariti, B. & Tollon, F. “Everybody knows what a pothole is”: representations of work and intelligence in AI practice and governance. AI & Soc (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-02162-0 

Catanzariti, B., Chandhiramowuli, S., Mohamed, S., Natarajan, S., Prabhat, S., Raval, N., Taylor, A., S., Wang, D. (2022). The Global Labours of AI and Data Intensive Systems. In Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 319-322). https://doi.org/10.1145/3462204.348172 

Catanzariti, B. (2017). Angelologia e burocrazia: tecnologie del potere amministrativo. Filosofia, 62, 41-57. https://doi.org/10.13135/2704-8195/3880 

Book chapters

Catanzariti, B., Dal Molin, L. & Galanos, V. (forthcoming), "Stay or Leave? Mapping participatory and abolitionist approaches in Critical Data Studies."

Catanzariti, B., (2022). “How to Use Mechanical Turk Ethically”, in SAGE Research Methods Doing Research Online: How To Guide. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529608403. 

Catanzariti, B., (2022). “Facial Recognition and The Right to Appear: Infrastructural Challenges in Anti-Surveillance Resistance”, in Currie, M., J. Knox & C. McGregor (eds.). Data Justice & the Right to the City. University of Edinburgh Press.  https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474492973-022.

Catanzariti, B., “Feeling Machines: Emotion Recognition in Personal Assistants”, in Goldschmidt, P., Haddow, G., and Mazanderani, F., ed. (2020) Uncanny Bodies. Edinburgh: Luna Press.

Policy Reports

Collier, B., Currie, M., and B. Catanzariti (2024), "Chamberfakes: assessing the threats posed by generative AI technologies to parliamentary democracy in Scotland", The Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research

Catanzariti, B. (2023). “AI, Health, and Discourse”, DCMS Briefing Paper.

Op-Eds

Garforth, J., Catanzariti, B. and M. Mani (2024), Bridging the Gap: Reflections from teaching translational data and AI ethics. Centre for Technomoral Futures. 7 August 2024.

Catanzariti, B. (2024). The politics of curriculum: Inflecting knowledge in computer science education. Society for Social Studies of Science. Backchannels. 23 January.

Currie, M, & Catanzariti, B. (2020). Data Politics: Drag, Deepfakes and the Taming of Technology, The New Real Magazine. 14 October.

Work in progress

'Medical Normativities in Multi-modal Machine Learning: A Critical Analysis'

'(De)Coding Language: An Ethnographic Study of Prompt Engineering'

'The Curriculum, Undone: Knowledge and Power in Computer Science Education'