Andrea Pollio

ERC sectors

SDG

• Platforms & Society (2024-), Editor of magazine, editorial series, encyclopaedia

• African Infrastructure Futures Conference (21/11/2022-23/2/2023), Program committee

• Ricercatore, presso University of Cape Town (4/1/2021-31/12/2022)

• Flow/Overflow/Shortage editorial collective (2022-). Coordinamento
• UTA-Do (2022-). Coordinamento

• Collegio di Pianificazione e Progettazione. Componente

Master of Science

• Urban and Regional Economics. A.A. 2023/24, PIANIFICAZIONE TERRITORIALE, URBANISTICA E PAESAGGISTICO-AMBIENTALE. Titolare del corso

Bachelor of Science

• Descrivere, analizzare, interpretare (Atelier) (modulo di Fattori geografici e economici nello sviluppo del territorio). A.A. 2019/20, PIANIFICAZIONE TERRITORIALE, URBANISTICA E PAESAGGISTICO-AMBIENTALE. Collaboratore del corso

• Emanuele Sciuva. Programme in Urban And Regional Development (38^th cycle, 2022-in progress)
  Research subject: NomadLands: Digital Nomadism, Geoarbitrage and Infrastructural Transformations
  
  Urban studies
  Urban studies
  Urban studies

Since 2015, Andrea has been researching digital capitalism in urban Africa. His work has addressed the African economies of global platforms like Uber and Amazon, as well as the making of technological innovation into a matter of local statecraft in cities like Cape Town, Nairobi and Kigali. One of Andrea's research interests traces the influence of Silicon Valley ideologies over the practices of humanitarian development. His work has appeared both in Urban Studies and Geography journals (IJURR, Urban Studies, The Annals of the American Association of Geographers), as well as in leading cultural theory journals such as Economy & Society and the Journal of Cultural Economy.

Current projects:

Smartness as wealth (Nairobi) – Volkswagen Stiftung (2023-2027)

Funded by the Volkswagen foundation, It is a four-year project which covers five cities, including Nairobi (Kenya), Tokyo (Japan), Kolkata (India), Denver (USA) and Hamburg (Germany). In Nairobi, where I am coinvestigator, the research focuses on the relationship between the city’s vibrant fintech ecosystem, and the speculative promises of social and economic inclusion.

Funded by the DIST department at Polito and spearheaded by Francesca Governa, this two-year project addresses the role of international finance in Milan's recent urban transformation.

Recent projects:

Funded by the Volvo Research and Education Foundation, this project involves documenting the intersections between digital platforms and the motorcycle-taxi sector in Kigali, Nairobi and Cape Town. Andrea co-leads this project with Liza R. Cirolia and Rike Sitas, investigating how digital platforms and new financial technologies are shaping informal mobility infrastructures in urban Africa.

Funded under a Marie Curie fellowship (grant 886772), this three-year book project is an ethnography of Chinese technocapitalism and its encounter with Nairobi’s existing digital innovation landscape. With the aim to demystify simplistic anxieties about China’s digital presence in Africa, the manuscript will offer a grounded reflection on the multiple ways in which cities become the foil and the testbed of technopolitical and geopolitical shifts.

• Pollio, Andrea; Cirolia, Liza Rose (2024)
  Beyond Inclusion: Glitchy Economies and the Promise of Platformization in African Cities. In: Theory on Demand #54. In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround / Neves J., Steinberg M., Amsterdam, Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 148-161. ISBN: 9789083412559
  Contributo in Volume
• Cirolia, Liza Rose; Pollio, Andrea; Sitas, Rike; Fortuin, Alicia; Odeo, Jack Ong’iro; ... (2024)
  Fintech ‘frontiers’ and the platformed motorcycle: Emergent infrastructures of value creation in African cities. In: ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE. ISSN 0263-7758
  Contributo su Rivista
• Pollio, Andrea (2024)
  Of Bloatware and Spreadsheets: Nairobi, Chinese Phones, and the Limits of Data Coloniality. In: THE JOURNAL OF URBAN TECHNOLOGY, pp. 1-22. ISSN 1063-0732
  Contributo su Rivista
• Chen, Julie; van Doorn, Niels; Grohmann, Rafael; Pollio, Andrea; Soriano, Cheryll (2024)
  Introducing Platforms & Society. In: PLATFORMS & SOCIETY, vol. 1, pp. 1-2. ISSN 2976-8624
  Contributo su Rivista
• Pollio, Andrea; Abbas, Sophia; Baker, Alex; Barve, Suyash; Kasper, Moritz; Kourri, ... (2024)
  Grammars of Urban Extremes: Reading Jonathan Silver’s The Infrastructural South. In: ANTIPODE, pp. 1-7. ISSN 1467-8330
  Contributo su Rivista
• Cirolia, Liza R.; Pollio, Andrea (2024)
  Spectrums of infrastructural hybridity: insights from urban Africa for a propositional research agenda. In: Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities / S.N., S.L., Edward Elgar, pp. 179-195. ISBN: 9781800889149
  Contributo in Volume
• Pollio, Andrea (2023)
  Cities as Geopolitical Testbeds of Digital Infrastructure. , Chicago, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs
  Altro
• Sitas, Rike; Cirolia, Liza; Pollio, Andrea; Odeo, Jack; Sebarenzi, Alexis; Fortuin, ... (2023)
  Fintech and the platformed motorcycle: speculating on ordinary mobility economies in urban Africa. In: PLATFORM POLITICS AND SILICON SAVANNAHS, Cape Town, African Centre for Cities pp. 1-32
  Altro
• Huang, Zhengli; Pollio, Andrea (2023)
  Between highways and fintech platforms: Global China and Africa’s infrastructure state. In: GEOFORUM, vol. 147, pp. 1-9. ISSN 0016-7185
  Contributo su Rivista
• Pollio, Andrea; Rose Cirolia, Liza; Ong'iro Odeo, Jack (2023)
  Algorithmic Suturing: Platforms, Motorcycles and the ‘Last Mile’ in Urban Africa. In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH. ISSN 0309-1317
  Contributo su Rivista