Francesco Lapenta is the Founding Director of the John Cabot University Institute of Future and Innovation Studies. Currently, he is also a Mozilla-Ford Research Fellow. and the Technical Editor of the I.E.E.E. P7006 standard on Personal Data Artificial Intelligence Agents. His research focuses on emerging technologies, innovation, technologies’ governance, and standardization processes, ethics and impact assessment, and future scenario analysis.
He holds a Ph.D. In Sociology from the University of London, joint supervision Goldsmiths College and the London School of Economics. The Ph.D. was awarded a research grant by the E.S.R.C. (Economic and Social Research Council, UK). He has worked as Associate Professor in New Media Studies and Business Innovation at the Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies at RUC University, Denmark (2009-2019), and Assistant Professor (2007-2009). Visiting Professor at New York University (2011-2012) and John Cabot University (2019).
He has organized many international conferences in the United States, Latin America, and Europe and participated in, and organized, countless academic and public events worldwide influencing the debate on emerging technologies. He has for years served on the executive board of the IVSA association. His latest works include the influential books: Research Methods in Service Innovation (F. Lapenta and F. Sørensen, Elgar 2017)), in which he explores the use of future-oriented scenario analysis for technology and innovation research. The 2016 book Data Ethics – The New Competitive Advantage by G. Hasselbalch and P. Tranberg (editor: F. Lapenta, Publishare) was one of the first books to describe the concept and establish privacy and the right to control one’s own data as key positive legal and business parameters. In 2011 he published Locative Media and the Digital Visualization of Space, Place, and Information, (Lapenta Ed. Taylor and Francis).
Prof. Lapenta has been teaching courses and seminars in Business and Information Technologies, Digital Rights and Media Ethics, New Media Studies, Advanced Media Based Research Methods, Ethics and Impact Assessment of Emerging Technologies. He has supervised countless student-industry collaborative projects. as part of his Master’s courses.