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.
Nightingale
2025
https://nightingaledvs.com/visualizing-as-a-form-of-collective-care/
2025
Visualizing as a Form of Collective Care
Çay, Damla, Dario Rodighiero, and Weidi Zhanghttps://nightingaledvs.com/visualizing-as-a-form-of-collective-care/
Care is easy to recognize on a personal level, especially when it takes the form of small, attentive gestures woven into daily life. We see it in how someone nurses a sick friend, tends a garden, or stitches a quilt by hand. Each act, marked by presence, patience, and the quiet commitment to care through touch, time, and attention. It takes shape through quiet, deliberate acts that often go unnoticed, yet carry lasting weight and meaning. But what does care look like when it scales up—across complex systems where the risks are higher, the people more dispersed, and the consequences harder to see?
Linking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries
2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72437-4_8
2024
Mapping Techniques for an Automated Library Classification: The Case Study of Library Loans at Bibliotheca Hertziana
Casey, Hannah Laureen, Alessandro Adamou, and Dario Rodighierohttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72437-4_8
This paper introduces an innovative analytical method for visualising research libraries, overcoming the limitations of the assumptions made by their classification systems. The approach combines user loan data with deep mapping techniques to graphically display usage patterns and thematic clusters. Dimensionality reduction is used to visualise the catalogue by book loans, and prompt engineering with large language models is used to describe loan clusters with detailed summaries and titles. This approach was applied to the library collection owned by Bibliotheca Hertziana, a renowned research institute for art history based in Rome. The final output was assessed by a group of experts through interviews supported by an atlas providing statistical information on clusters. This yielded promising results towards a more general framework for visually mapping textual collections and capturing their transformation and usage from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Journal of Digital History
2024
https://doi.org/10.1515/JDH-2023-0004
2024
Super-Vision: Tracing EPFL History Through 8,000 Doctoral Theses
Rodighiero, Dario, Philippe Rivière, and Sarah Kenderdinehttps://doi.org/10.1515/JDH-2023-0004
The fiftieth anniversary of EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) offered the opportunity to retrace its history through the digital archives housed by the institute itself. Part of the exhibition Infinity Room 2, the Super-Vision project investigates the practice of academic advising by visualizing 8,000 doctoral theses in a work at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Inaugurated in September 2019 at EPFL Pavilions, Super-Vision presents a diachronic mapping that uses artificial intelligence to shed light on an institutional dataset that would be unobservable otherwise. To achieve such a goal, 8,000 doctoral theses are analysed with natural language processing and mapped with techniques of dimensionality reduction, combining language and time within in an interactive visualization accessible to the public. The project title has a twofold meaning: on the one hand, it refers to the educational practice that connects doctoral students to supervisors; on the other hand, it employs information design like a macroscope to grasp complex phenomena from a distant standpoint. The result offers EPFL employees and museum visitors an original perspective to look at the institute with different eyes.
