Research profile

I am a philosopher of science and a social scientist (both at PhD level) with a genuine passion and commitment to inter-/cross-disciplinary research by combining theories and methods from the philosophy, ethics, social epistemology, normative economics, the empirical social sciences/techno-anthropology, participatory design, and the social policy field.

My research interests span from the foundations of normative economics, robust methodology to measure multidimensional welfare and social/health indicators research, to on-going digitalization and datafication processes in the public sector, and how they should take place in liberal democracies (through inclusive and participatory methods, active stakeholders/public engagagement also, by the so-called Citizen Science).

My research agenda concentrates on the following main lines of investigation, which converge on the goal of addressing how science and technology should be developed, adopted, resisted, and translated in practice.

1) I investigate implications of the on-going debates on "values, objectivity, and social knowledge" and "value, science, and democracy" in wellbeing and health research in economics and related disciplines (e.g., public health, technological design for well being, digital welfare)  and devise the philosophical foundations (an axiology and epistemology) of economic methodology for multidimensional welfare evaluation (econometrics, robust model evaluation).

2) I devise ethical and epistemological foundations of methods for "technological design for WB", "AI ethics by design", “value-sensitive design”, and "AI for social good": by an inclusive and participatory rationale, including the "citizen science" ideal. My aim is to promote the systematic engagement of users, stakeholders in the creation of AI-based technologies, AI systems or infrastructures, predictive algorithms, automated algorithmic decision-making tools for the public sector (with a special attention for e-health, digital healthcare and digital welfare tools). Generative AI and its impact on pedagogic models in higher education, especially their influence on academic integrity, is another topic of deep interest to me.

3) I strive to re-conceptualize the "Citizen Science" (CS) ideal across the sciences in ways suitable for the digital era. How a data-intensive CS, and related data governance and data menagement frameworks/tools should look like to reconcile the participatory ideal intrinsic to CS with scientific rigor (in different fields).

Currently, I am a partner in the CS module of the EU horizon funded project OBAMA Next (https://obama-next.eu/project/) aimed at delivering a toolbox (including CS) for monitoring and mapping marine biodiversity and habitats to support evidence-based decision making, and policy actions for marine conservation (also through CS).​

***My monograph titled "Values, Knowledge and Objectivity in Health Economics: New Methodological Trends in Extra-Welfarism" is under contract and forthcoming with Routledge (UK).