People

Head of Research Group, Associate Professor

Signe Louise Yndigegn signelouise@itu.dk, PhD, is Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. Her research is placed in the intersection of Ethnography, Participatory Design and Science and Technology Studies. It focuses on design and use of digital technology in different constellations of older people, public institutions and welfare services especially within questions of loneliness, civic engagements, active ageing, and digitalisation processes. In her PhD dissertation, drawing on a theoretical framework of STS and Participatory Design, she explored resistance, participation and infrastructuring in a public social innovation project. Signe is Head of the Bachelor program Digital Design and Interactive Technologies – and have been teaching at ITU for many years in Ethnography, Qualitative research, Philosophy of Science and Co-design.

Associate Professor

Morten Hjelholt is Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He is heading the section Digital Societies and participation. His research deals primarily with digital welfare, digitalisation and digital divides. Morten participates actively in the social debate. This is achieved through active participation in a broad political network, as requested speaker and as appointed council member in the Central Disability Council under the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Associate Professor

Sara Marie Ertner, PhD, is an assistant professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on welfare technologies and the interrelated practices of design, policy and care. Her PhD explored practices of ‘infrastructuring design’ through ethnographic studies of the recursive processes of developing collaborative sites for design, and new technological welfare solutions. Her research is situated in the intersection between STS and design research, and a central concern has been to develop mutually constructive links between design and STS research such as on topics related to knowing users, and doing intervention in accountable and generative ways. Other topics of concern are policy and care practices, infrastructures of care and welfare, material practices of design and prototypes.

Associate Professor

Giacomo Poderi, PhD in Sociology and Social Research, is assistant professor at the Digital Design Department where he teaches courses on digital culture and user studies at Bachelor and Master levels. Broadly, his research interests concern the interplay between society and Information Technology through the lenses of Science and Technology Studies and Participatory Design. In particular, he has focused extensively on the meaning of participation and the role it plays in mediating use, design, and development aspects of IT. His research approach rests at the intersection between ethnographic interpretive research and research through participatory design.