Meet the researcher working at the project: The Digital Society and Trust

Esther Oluffa Pedersen 

Esther Oluffa Pedersen is associate professor of philosophy at the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University and PI of the research project Digital Society and Trust (DIS-TRUST) funded by the VELUX foundations. Within the DIS-TRUST-project Esther examines how digital mediation affects interpersonal trust. Among other perspectives Esther investigates whether our trust relations are altered by the ubiquity of digital tools that enable seemingly invisible search after information about others.

In 2018 Esther defended her Doctor Phil thesis on intellectual debates on democracy, social responsibility and science (Fremkaldte Kulturrum, Hans Reitzel 2019). She obtained her PhD (Die Mythosphilosophie Ernst Cassirer’s, Königshausen & Neumann, 2008) og master’s degree from the University of Copenhagen. Her philosophical research focuses on theoretical comprehensions of human sociality in specific social, cultural, and historical contexts. Esther strives to develop theoretical conceptualizations of social phenomena such as trust, judgment, and the human ability to formulate and devise new concepts.

Find Esther's profile at the Roskilde University Research Portal
 

Mads Vestergaard

Mads Vestergaard is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, affiliated with the Digital Society and Trust (DIS-TRUST) project funded by the VELUX foundations. Mads’ research centers on how public digitalization affects citizens' trust. Mads holds a master's degree (cand. mag.) in philosophy, with a focus on philosophy of technology, and a Ph.D. degree in digitalization and democracy, both from the University of Copenhagen. His previous research has dealt with the societal challenges that arise from the digitalization of public institutions and the media landscape, including new forms of data-driven surveillance and digital misinformation. He is the author of the monograph Digital Totalitarianism (Informations Forlag 2019) and co-author of Reality Lost – Markets of Attention, Misinformation and Manipulation (Springer Cham 2019). Mads has taught philosophy at Krogerup Højskole and Folkeuniversitetet and has disseminated his and others' research through a wide range of public lectures and in the media.

Find Mads' profile at the Roskilde University Research Portal
 

Micol Mieli 

Micol Mieli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, affiliated with the Digital Society and Trust (DIS-TRUST) project funded by the VELUX foundations. Micol’s research focuses on interpersonal trust on travel platforms. In her research Micol adopts an interdisciplinary approach to explore the relationship between people and technology and the effects of digitalization on society. After a BA degree in law, she later pursued an MSc and a PhD in service studies at Lund University in Sweden. Micol’s research has dealt with consumer behavior and tourism, particularly concerning technology, information search, and spatiotemporal behavior. In her PhD thesis, she wrote about tourist information behaviour and tourists’ relationship with mobile technologies, in particular the smartphone, drawing from tourism, human geography, and philosophy of technology. Micol also has a keen interest in epistemology and methodology, striving to develop innovative methodologies in her research.

Find Micol's profile at the Roskilde University Research Portal
 

Freja Schiermer Larsen

Freja Schiermer Larsen is a PhD student at the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University affiliated with the Digital Society and Trust (DIS-TRUST) project funded by the VELUX foundations. Freja’s PhD project focuses on trust in online service providers. She investigates the nature of our trust in service providers in the digital sphere and how we, as citizens and consumers, assess their trustworthiness.

Freja holds an interdisciplinary master's degree in Informatics and Philosophy & Science Studies from Roskilde University, and wrote her masters’ thesis in Informatics. Her approach is problem-oriented, aiming to enhance dialogue and synergy in interdisciplinary knowledge production with the goal to further sustainability and applicability to current human needs. 

 Find Freja's profile at the Roskilde University Research Portal