Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Biomedicine, Self, and Society | Usher Institute | Edinburgh Medical School (Scotland, U.K.)
Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
Research Interests
AI and robotic technologies in health and social care | Anthropology of disasters and polluted environments | Elderly care and independent living in Japan | Ethnography and qualitative research methods | gender - power and resistance studies | Human rights and humanitarian assistance | Risk theory - neoliberalism - biopolitics | Robot-ethics and emotional intelligence | Socio-cultural / legal / linguistic and medical anthropology |
About Giulia
I am a social anthropologist specialising in Japanese Studies and Science and Technology Studies. My research focuses on risk, technology and health. I have been the research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project “AI and Health” since May 2019 at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society (Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh Medical School) my first postdoctoral appointment. I was then awarded a competitive 3-year-long Wellcome Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Science and in January 2022 I started a new project (as Principal Investigator) focusing on the uses of social robots in Japan and the UK and how these affect practices of care. For my Fellowship, I trace AI and robotics innovation for care from the robotics laboratories to final users, and focus on embodied experiences of these technologies across different cultural contexts. My study lies at the intersection between medical sociology, anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. The research will create knowledge of how AI and robotic technologies for care may shape and be shaped by different understandings of the role and the value of human care. The project involves 14 months of fieldwork in the UK and Japan divided in two 7-month-long blocks in each country.