Francesca Morini

Francesca Morini is a designer, lecturer and scholar. Her research is positioned at the intersection of computer science, data visualization, and journalism studies.

Francesca holds a BA in Media and Communication studies from the Università degli Studi di Modena and Reggio Emilia, as well as a MSc in Communication Design from the Politecnico di Milano. She is about to defend her PhD, carried out in between 2021 and 2024 at Södertörn University, in Stockholm. Her dissertation focuses on exploring the changing epistemology of journalism in its entangling with design and visualization practice. Elaborating on the issue of objectivity and its relationship to discursive power, Francesca develops a new epistemology for journalism, centered around values like transdisciplinarity, aesthetics, and autonomy.

This theoretical scaffolding extends also to her professional and teaching practices. In collaboration with her clients, Francesca has worked on several projects related to climate change and broad societal issues. In this context, data visualization has been leveraged a communicative tool to support audiences understand and relate to a plethora of complex and wicked problems. In conversation with her students, she has brought forward various courses and workshops to discuss critical issues related to the understanding and use of digital technologies. In this regards, data visualization has become a tool to pose questions, rather than provide answers.

Francesca is also affiliated with the UCLAB Potsdam and part of HEM, a group of researchers and designers working in the field of data journalism.