• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Meet us
    • Open days
    • Virtual tours
    • Upcoming events
    • Applicant days
    • Meet us in your country
    • Chat to our students
    • Ask us a question
    • Order a prospectus
    • Our campuses
    • Our four campuses
    • Accommodation options
    • Our halls
    • Helping you find a home
    • What you can study
    • Find a course
    • Full A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Our academic departments
    • How to study with us
    • Undergraduate application process
    • Postgraduate application process
    • International student application process
    • Apprenticeships
    • Applying through Clearing
    • Transfer from another university
    • Fees and financial support
    • Undergraduate finance
    • Postgraduate finance
    • Our funding and support options
    • Supporting you
    • Your wellbeing
    • Student support and guidance tutors
    • Study skills support
    • Careers and employability
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Hand grabbing jigsaw pieces
Women of impact
  • See all profiles

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou - envisioning responsible innovation

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou is the University of Brighton 2018 Early Career Researcher (ECR) Ambassador and was awarded the ECR Research and Enterprise Excellence Award in 2017. Her research focuses on social transformations that relate to digital media and data technologies, such as self-tracking, wearables and Artificial Intelligence (AI). She is the author of Feminist Activism and Digital Networks: Between empowerment and vulnerability (Springer, 2017) and serves as Chair of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) Digital Culture and Communication Section since 2016. She is currently writing a book on Feminist Data Studies.

Aristea Fotopoulou

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou

Research in digital technologies, which addresses social issues and has a public engagement agenda, is key to developing sustainable solutions.

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou

After completing her PhD, Dr Aristea Fotopoulou was employed as a postdoctoral fellow in an EU-funded project that examined Responsible Innovation and sought integration into research, innovation and policy. Working in an international interdisciplinary team of researchers, innovators, policy makers, and other stakeholders associated with various emerging technologies such as autonomous robots and data protection, she investigated self-tracking and wearable sensors, as well as the mediation of smart grids. This project was the beginning of an investigation in the Quantified Self, digital health start-ups and data sharing, which she continued at the University of California (with research funding from RCUK Digital Economy NEMODE)

Meanwhile, Aristea also worked alongside community reporters in an action research project that focused on the social and digital conditions for narrative exchange and knowledge production (funded by EPSRC Framework for Innovation and Research in MediaCityUK, at Goldsmiths University of London), and with Age UK for a project that looked at digital literacy, knowledge and expertise (funded Digital Economy Communities and Culture Network+ at the University of Sussex).

Through these projects she became increasingly interested in developing a model for critical data literacy for audiences, citizens, young people, patients and community organisations. With funding from the Rising Stars scheme, she is currently working with local community organisations in order to identify the necessary skills that will help citizens analyse, visualise, interpret data and tell stories that empower their communities.

Hand writing on an electronic tablet
Feminist Activism and Digital Networks are an urgently needed antidote to what Dr. Fotopoulou refers to as the invisibility of gender and sexuality as embodied practices in communication studies and social movement studies alike. Focusing on the lively and important forms of feminism occurring in digital networked cultures as spaces of tension and contradiction, possibilities and foreclosures, Dr. Fotopoulou brilliantly helps us understand the complex nature of activism and connectivity in contemporary feminist theory and activism. This book should be required reading for social justice classrooms.

Carol Stabile, University of Oregon, USA, Managing Editor, Fembot Collective, Co-editor Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology

Inspiring others

Positioned at the intersections of media and cultural studies with science and technologies studies, Aristea has published widely in the themes of information politics and big data, digital engagement, media literacy, intersectionality and queer theory, and digital health. She has appeared on the radio for Brighton Digital Festival and in other public fora, and written for the online platform  Open Democracy, covering themes around data and their implications for gender equality and social justice. She is focused on making an academic contribution to critical data studies, and aims to produce responsible research that helps civil society organisations, decision makers and industry actors to make the world a fairer place.

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19
  • The Student Contract

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents