Dr Benedetta Catanzariti
Job Title
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
City (Address)
EdinburghCountry (Address)
UKResearch interests
Research interests
My work explores the social, historical, and political dimensions of data-driven technologies, with a focus on machine learning and its related data practices (the creation and maintenance of training datasets, model development, and evaluation). I use qualitative research methods to study the classification practices that underpin algorithmic decision-making and situate claims of data-driven ʻobjectivity’ within specific historical, cultural, and political imaginaries. I am broadly interested in engineering cultures across industry, research, and educational contexts.
My current project, ‘Technology in Translation: Investigating Organizational Contexts of AI Development’, explores the contexts of development of diagnostic AI, with a focus on medical imaging. As an STS scholar, I am particularly interested in how developers deal with the problem of “uncertainty” and "ambiguity" in medical knowledge and practice, and what organizational and conceptual strategies they adopt to translate such uncertainty and ambiguity into quantifiable outputs. The project aims to help produce a set of conceptual and reflexive tools to engage practitioners in conversations around algorithmic harm. This research is funded by a British Academy PostDoctoral Fellowship.
I am also a core member of the AI Ethics & Society network, and a PostDoctoral Affiliate in the Centre for Technomoral Futures at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
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 Ethics as Practice (2025)
Data Ethics in Health and Social Care (2024)
Ethical Data Futures (2023)
Current students
Jacqueline Rowe, Amanda Horzyka, Osman Batur Ince, and Cyndie Demeocq (project supervision, Center for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing)
Past students
Sandra Wheeler (MSc in Data Science for Health and Social Care)
Publications
Journal Articles
Catanzariti, B. (under review) "Taming Affect: On the Construction of Objectivity in Data Annotation Practices."
Bennett, S.J., Catanzariti, B. & Tollon, F. (2025) “Everybody knows what a pothole is”: representations of work and intelligence in AI practice and governance. AI & Society. 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). DOI: 10.1145/3462204.3481725
Book chapters
Catanzariti, B., Dal Molin, L. & Galanos, V. (under review), "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.
Works within
Publications by user content
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Catanzariti B. AI, Health, and Discourse: Investigating the Impact of Facial Expression Recognition Systems in Healthcare. 2023. |
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Catanzariti B. How to use Mechanical Turk ethically. In Currie M, editor, SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online. SAGE Publications. 2022 doi: 10.4135/9781529608403 |
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Catanzariti B. Facial recognition and the right to appear: Infrastructural challenges in anti-surveillance resistance. In Currie M, Knox J, McGregor C, editors, Data Justice and the Right to the City. Edinburgh University Press. 2022. p. 282-300 doi: 10.1515/9781474492973-022 |
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Catanzariti B, Chandhiramowuli S, Mohamed S, Natarajan S, Prabhat S, Raval N et al. The global labours of AI and data intensive systems. In Birnholtz J, Ciolfi L, Ding S, Fussell S, Monroy-Hernández A, Munson S, Shklovski I, Naaman M, editors, CSCW '21: Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 2021. p. 319-322 doi: 10.1145/3462204.3481725 |
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Currie M, Catanzariti B. Data politics: Drag, deepfakes and the taming of technology. 2020. |
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Catanzariti B. Feeling machines: Emotion recognition in personal assistants. In Goldschmidt P, Haddow G, Mazanderani F, editors, Uncanny Bodies. Luna Press Publishing. 2020 |
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Catanzariti B. Angelologia e burocrazia: Tecnologie del potere amministrativo. Filosofia. 2017 Nov 25;62:41-57. doi: 10.13135/2704-8195/3880 |
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