Team

Massimo Leone

Massimo Leone is Professor of Philosophy of Communication, Cultural Semiotics, and Visual Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Italy; part-time Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Shanghai, China; associate member of Cambridge Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge; Director of the Institute for Religious Studies at the Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento; and Adjunct Professor at the University of Caracas, Venezuela.

He has been visiting professor at several universities in the five continents. He has single-authored fifteen books, edited more than sixty collective volumes, and published more than six hundred articles in semiotics, religious studies and visual studies. He is the winner of a 2018 ERC Consolidator Grant and of a 2022 ERC Proof of Concept Grant. 

He is editor-in-chief of Lexia, the Semiotic Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy; co-editor-in-chief of Semiotica (De Gruyter), and co-editor of the book series I Saggi di Lexia (Rome: Aracne), Semiotics of Religion (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter) and Advances in Face Studies (London and New York: Routledge).

Position: Principal Investigator

ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8144-4337
Email: massimo.leone@unito.it

Federico Bellentani

Federico Bellentani is a Post-Doc Researcher and Project Manager within the ERC-PoC Project EUFACETS, University of Turin, Italy. He received his PhD from Cardiff University, UK (2017) and he holds a MA in semiotics (2013) from University of Bologna, Italy. In 2015-2016, he was a visiting researcher at the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia.

Today he is vice-president of the International Association of Semiotics of Space and Time and Head of Marketing and Communications at Injenia, an Italian ICT company specialized on artificial intelligence with a strong background in semiotics and storytelling. He teaches urban design at University of Bologna and in digital marketing at University of Ferrara, Italy.

His scientific production includes three books, 30 articles in semiotics, digital culture, cultural geography and architecture, and two edited special issues of academic journals. He presented his research in several international conferences. Among them, he was invited to give a lecture at an international program which brought together influential scholars and the former President of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid.

Position: Post-Doc Researcher and Project Manager

ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2505-9231
Email: federico.bellentani@unito.it

Daniela Ghidoli

Daniela Ghidoli is a Post-doc Researcher at Bruno Kessler Foundation, for the project FBK-ISR: EUFACETS (2024). Her research interests range from semiotics and Artificial Intelligence, with a focus on digital/phygital human interaction and marketing/communication. She received her PhD from the University of Turin, Italy (2011). She has a solid background on Marketing and Communication field (+18 years): as Marketing Director (Euronics 2021-2023), as Strategy Director (Accenture 2018-2021) and Semiotics/Brand Strategy Consultant for several companies (Nextatlas, Armando Testa, Zenith Optimedia, DigitasLbi, Wavemaker, Baba Consulting). Her scientific productions include 10 articles and she presented in several international conferences her Phd Thesis on a new semiotics protocol for Social Media Sentiment Analysis. She was Professor of Semiotics and Communication at Accademia di Brera, University of Turin, IED (Turin), Sole24Ore and Polimoda.

Position: Researcher 

Email: daniela.ghidoli@gmail.com

Daria Arkhipova

Daria Arkhipova is a Researcher at Bruno Kessler Foundation for the project FBK-ISR: EUFACETS (2024). She is a PhD candidate at University of Turin, Italy and University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research focuses on how Artificial Intelligence can influence decision-making, particularly in AI-mediated environments and social media. In 2022, she was a visiting researcher at Delft University of Technology in Delft, Netherlands. She holds an MA in Semiotics from University of Tartu, Estonia, and in Journalism and Communications from Voronezh State University, Russia. 

Position: Researcher 

ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2776-0918
Email: daria.arkhipova@unito.it

Stefania Yapo

Stefania Yapo is a Post-doc Researcher at Bruno Kessler Foundation, for the project FBK-ISR: EUFACETS (2024). She holds a PhD degree in Sociology and Social Research from the University of Trento (2020) and is a Researcher at the Department of Sociology in an ERC-HOMInG project. She had previously worked as a Researcher for the Centre for Religious Studies – Bruno Kessler Foundation ISR-FBK (2021) and collaborated with the University Complutense of Madrid (2021-2023). She was visiting doctoral student at the Comillas Pontifical University (2016-2017). She teaches Laboratories of Qualitative Methods with the use of dedicated CAQDAS – Atlas.ti software for the analysis implementation.

Her research interests include citizenship, migration, home, gender, politics, discrimination, AI and technologies.

Position: Researcher 

Email: stefania.yapo@unitn.it

Sara Hejazi

Sara Hejazi is a Researcher at Bruno Kessler Foundation, at the Center for Religious Studies. She is an anthropologist, with a focus on religions, ethical beliefs and behaviors in interaction with technology. She received her PhD from the University of Bergamo, Italy, in cultural anthropology and epistemology of complexity.
She has more than 10 years experience in research and ethnography, having carried out fieldwork research on different topics and among different communities: she studied the issue of veiling in the iranian context, political positioning among factory workers in the post industrial era in Turin, the buddhist monks in the Italian context, the muslim communities in northern Italy, sexual behavior in the digital revolution, the relationship between believers and religious digital artifacts, tengrism as an elitarian spiritual belief in the Kazakh context, disembodiment of 2022 social protests in Iran. Her scientific productions include various scientific articles and 6 monographic books, plus a great number of dissemination contributions for national and international magazines such as WIRED, ILSOLE24Ore, Vanity Fair, Diario. She regularly contributes for MicroMega philosophical Magazine and as an editorialist for ILT local newspaper in Trentino Alto Adige.

Position: Researcher 

ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2505-9231
Email: fhejazi@fbk.eu

Silvia Barbotto

Silvia Barbotto is a Post-Doc Researcher within the ERC-PoC Projecy EUFACETS at the University of Turin (IT), Department of Philosophy and Educational Science, where she is adjunct professor of the ‘Interactive storytelling and Art’ course in the Media communication and culture master’s programme. From 2010 to 2019, she has been living and working in Mexico doing art’s project (specialized in painting and cross media performance) and teaching in the Campus of Art, Design of habitat and Architecture at the University Autonomous of Yucatan. In the present, her research interests are focused on establishing academic frameworks related to the languages of art, semiotics of culture and space, ethnosemiotics, media studies, and face/body studies. Her participation within EUFACETS aims to be cross-cultural (Europe and Asia), multi-sectoral (art and science) and interdisciplinary (semiotics, art, life and earth sciences).

Position: Post-Doc Researcher and Project Manager

ORCID ID: ORCID 0000-0003-1675-3405
Email: silvia.barbotto@unito.it

Laura Boffi

As an interaction designer and researcher, Laura works in the field of participatory design and new technologies. Her focus is on designing experiences to bring people of different ages, cultures, and places together. During her PhD, Laura carried out a self-initiated project called “Co-Drive” on the new social relationships that autonomous cars could stimulate among people, which consisted in a virtual travel service between people at home and real drivers scattered in various parts of the world sharing car trips in extended reality. She prototyped the service with a range of possible users, including elderly people with limited mobility, young car drivers, and even local bus drivers in Kumasi, Ghana. Her project aimed to prompt intergenerational encounters that wouldn’t happen otherwise and to experiment with extended reality technologies, such as AR and VR, to challenge ageism-related stereotypes. Recently she has been broadening her interest beyond humans, embracing the interactions between species for the sake of biodiversity conservation. Contracted as an expert by the Joint Research Center of the European Commission in 2022, Laura focused on the relationships between humans and pollinating insects and designed participatory actions for farmers and citizens to support such insects. Following up on this emerging interest, nowadays Laura is questioning how participatory design can foster biodiversity conservation through the engagement of local communities and stakeholders. Not working within the boundaries of any specific discipline domains, Laura is trying to turn this apparent “belonging” struggle into the opportunity to build her transdisciplinary niche around her main participatory design expertise.

Position: Researcher 

ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1675-3405
Email: boffilaura@gmail.com