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Dario Rodighiero is an Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Groningen, where he is involved in programs that bridge data science with society. Based at the interdisciplinary faculty Campus Fryslân, he coordinates the minor Data Wise and teaches data and visual literacy within the Data Science and Society Bachelor’s program. He maintains active collaborations with Harvard University, where he is a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a principal at metaLAB—a research and teaching laboratory dedicated to experimenting with digital technologies in the arts and humanities.
Combining computational techniques with design, Dario investigates how complex information can be revealed. Grounded in Science and Technology Studies, his research focuses on the mapping of science: he is the author of Mapping Affinities: Democratizing Data Visualization, which proposes new ways to design organizational charts. His work further engages with digital cultural archives, exploring questions of representation, interpretation, and self-identification. Visualization is approached as a method for knowledge design, bridging critical inquiry and design practice to foster reflection and dialogue by opening new visual modes of understanding.
Dario holds a PhD from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he attended the doctoral program Architecture and Sciences of the City. He has held research and teaching positions at MIT, the European Commission, Paris-Sorbonne University, and Sciences Po. The collaboration with Bruno Latour at the médialab shaped his engagement with digital platforms as tools for philosophical inquiry and collective exploration. He lectured at venues such as CERN and Ars Electronica, and exhibited his work at the MAXXI and Harvard Art Museums, reflecting a sustained commitment to public engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration.
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Lessico Di Etica Pubblica
2024

Ethical and Aesthetical Questions on Stock Images: The Case of AI’s Depictions

Romele, Alberto, Sabina Rosenbergova, and Dario Rodighiero

https://www.eticapubblica.it/alberto-romele-dario-rodighiero-sabina-rosenbergova-ethical-and-aesthetical-questions-on-stock-images-the-case-of-ais-depictions/
In this article, the authors deal with stock images depicting AI as a face or a body that undergoes a process of fragmentation into particles, pixels, or voxels. These images, they contend, are the symptoms of a datafied worldview. In the first section, the authors discuss stock images of AI and account for their qualitative-quantitative analyses of about 7,500 images from the online catalog of Shutterstock. These analyses have brought out datafied faces and bodies as one of the main themes among stock images of AI. In the second part, the authors elaborate on the notion of datafication of the worldview and offer some examples from architecture and design. This second section includes a methodological detour, in which the authors propose articulating Panofsky’s iconology and Didi Huberman’s “symptomatic” perspective. In conclusion, the authors reflect on an apparently marginal aspect of stock images of AI: the abundant use of blue.
Anthology of Computers and the Humanities
2025

Moving Pictures of Thought: Extracting Visual Knowledge in Charles S. Peirce’s Manuscripts with Vision-Language Models

Pedretti, Carlo Teo, Davide Picca, and Dario Rodighiero

https://doi.org/10.63744/fkFGJ6wSzDPV
Diagrams are crucial yet underexplored tools in many disciplines, demonstrating the close connection between visual representation and scholarly reasoning. However, their iconic form poses obstacles to visual studies, intermedial analysis, and text-based digital workflows. In particular, Charles S. Peirce consistently advocated the use of diagrams as essential for reasoning and explanation. His manuscripts, often combining textual content with complex visual artifacts, provide a challenging case for studying documents involving heterogeneous materials. In this preliminary study, we investigate whether Visual Language Models (VLMs) can effectively help us identify and interpret such hybrid pages in context. First, we propose a workflow that (i) segments manuscript page layouts, (ii) reconnects each segment to IIIF-compliant annotations, and (iii) submits fragments containing diagrams to a VLM. In addition, by adopting Peirce’s semiotic framework, we designed prompts to extract key knowledge about diagrams and produce concise captions. Finally, we integrated these captions into knowledge graphs, enabling structured representations of diagrammatic content within composite sources.
IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP)
2025

Living Library of Trees: Mapping Knowledge Ecology in Arnold Arboretum

Malmstedt, Johan, Giacomo Nanni, and Dario Rodighiero

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.00114
As biodiversity loss and climate change accelerate, botanical gardens serve as vital infrastructures for research, education, and conservation. This project focuses on the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, a 281-acre living museum founded in 1872 in Boston. Drawing on more than a century of curatorial data, the research combines historical analysis with computational methods to visualize the biographies of plants and people. The resulting platform reveals patterns of care and scientific observations, along with the collective dimensions embedded in botanical data. Using techniques from artificial intelligence, geospatial mapping, and information design, the project frames the arboretum as a system of shared agency—an active archive of more-than-human affinities that records the layered memory of curatorial labor, the situated nature of knowledge production, and the potential of design to bridge archival record and future care.