Biography
Marina Micheli is a scientific project officer at the Digital Economy Unit of the Joint Research Centre. She is interested in the social value of data, digital inequalities and data power and her background is at the intersection of media studies and sociology. She has a PhD in Information Society from the Department of Sociology and Social Research of University Milano-Bicocca (Italy).
She joined the JRC in 2018 for the project DigiTranScope, which run from 2017 to 2020 at the Centre for Advanced Studies (JRC-CAS). The project examined the role of governments, societal actors and the EU in distributing the value generated from data more equitably in society (see the final report).
In the context of Digitranscope, she researched the models for the governance of personal data emerging in the current data landscape adopting a "social-science informed" understanding of data governance. The results are published in the article Emerging models of data governance in the age of datafication on the journal Big Data & Society.
In another strand of research, she investigated with semi-structured interviews how European municipalities are getting access to private sector data of public interest (also referred to as business to government (B2G) data sharing). She presented her research at various conferences (Data Power 2019, Data for Policy 2020), talks (e.g. DataVaults) and seminars (e.g. Living.in-eu).
Currently, she is developing the research agenda on data governance and data use for the public interest at the Digital Economy Unit of the JRC. With the Data Governance and Operational Enablers team, she is examining in particular the perspectives of different social actors involved in data sharing across sectors in EU with the aim of identifying the enablers of more inclusive forms of data governance.
She is also co-directing the study Regional and local data-driven innovation through collective intelligence and sandboxing conducted by a consortium of partners (PwC, Open Evidence, Technopolis Group and the network Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC)).
Before joining the JRC, she was a senior researcher and teaching associate at the Institute of Communication and Media Research of the University of Zurich, within the Internet use and society division chaired by prof. Hargittai. Previously, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of Milano-Bicocca University, where she earned her PhD in 2013.
She also worked as a social researcher for a wide range of Italian institutions (e.g. Department of Economic Development and Coesion and Associazione Italiana Editori) and European projects (e.g. P2Share, NetChildrenGoMobile). Her research revolved around technology adoption and use examined with a socio-cultural and critical perspective. In her work, she has challenged sensationalist and one-dimensional accounts of digital media through sound empirical research on digital divides/inequalities, young people social media use, Internet skills, ICTs adoption in the school setting, and online participation.
She has authored and co-authored several scientific publications.
You can find her on Twitter as @minaemme.