I study communication and the way technology transforms it: how language, habits and relationships change when they pass through digital tools and platforms, and why some innovations take hold while others stay on the margins. I also work on the Arbëreshë minority of Calabria and its promotion.
Technology and communication
I am interested in how each new technology changes the way we inform ourselves, tell our stories and build relationships. This was the subject of my degree thesis in Literature and Cultural Heritage, on the effects of technological change on the way we communicate, and I pursue it from the perspective of an engineer who works with digital models and data every day.
Diffusion models
My reference point is Everett Rogers’ theory of the diffusion of innovations: an innovation spreads over time, through communication channels, within a social system. Adopters arrive at different moments (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards), and the pace of adoption traces the classic S-curve. These models help explain how a technology moves from a few pioneers to everyday use, and which factors speed it up or hold it back.
Network science
To read these processes I use network science, which describes how connections form between people, information and objects, and how the structure of a network shapes what flows through it: who is connected to whom, which nodes bridge different groups, where communities form. Combining diffusion models with network analysis shows not only how fast an idea or a technology spreads, but also along which paths.
The Arbëreshë minority
I study the history and heritage of the Arbëreshë community of Calabria, the Albanian-speaking minority I belong to, and how its language and culture can be protected and promoted. I am interested in how language and identity are passed on when the occasions for everyday use become fewer, and in the role communication and digital technologies can play in keeping them alive.
- October 2026 – Moderator of the dialogue on art as a “way of beauty” between the Western and Eastern Churches, Seminary of the Eparchy of Lungro.
- April 2024 – The broadcaster LaC devoted a special report to me on the loss of the Arbëreshë language among younger generations (LaC News24 report, in Italian).
- June 2022 – Honorary title Artista Benemerito d’Arberia, Municipality of Civita.
- October 2018 – Article L’evoluzione tipologica dell’abitazione arbereshe (The typological evolution of the Arbëreshë house).
- 25 May 2018 – Paper Il mito di Giorgio Castriota (The myth of Skanderbeg), Conference on Skanderbeg, UNESCO Association of Cosenza, Museo dei Brettii e degli Enotri.
- 14 April 2018 – Paper Giorgio Castriota «Iskander Beg»: rivisitazione storica (Skanderbeg: a historical reappraisal), International Conference on Arbëreshë Studies, Civita.