Biography

Laura Lotti is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner investigating protocols for material autonomy and interdependence across new and old technologies. She is Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA University Lisbon, where she is working on the FCT-funded individual project “Regenerative Exchanges in Southern and Western Europe: Histories and Futures of Agroecology Amidst the Polycrisis”, tracing the genealogy of contemporary regenerative communities across Portugal and Italy.

She obtained her PhD from UNSW Sydney, with a dissertation investigating money as a technical object and the (then) novel affordances of the blockchain protocol for networked organisations and collective resource governance.

She co-founded Other Internet Research Institute, a non-profit organisation exploring the infrastructural imaginaries and possibilities of decentralised protocols, and co-curated its 2025 anthology Other Internet 2018–2024 (Metalabel).

Her essays, academic articles, and chapters on these topics can be found in books such as Radical Friends (Torque Books), MoneyLab Reader (INC), Aesthetics After Finitude (re.press), Chimeras (Onassis Foundation); and journals such as Internet Policy Review, Finance & Society, communication +1, Media Theory Journal, Philosophy & Technology. She further explored these themes through speculative projects and collaborative practices presented at Kunst Werke Berlin, Transmediale, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Unsound, Biennale of Sydney.

Research fields

  • History of technology
  • Environmental media
  • Political ecology
  • Agroecology

Selected publications

  • Merk, Tara, Laura Lotti, Nick Houde & Morshed Mannan. “A workers’ inquiry in Decentralised Autonomous Organisations: Insights and policies to align blockchain-based work with the solidarity economy.” Internet Policy Review 15 (2026): https://doi.org/10.14763/2026.1.2053 [link] 🔓
  • Lotti, Laura & Penny Rafferty. “Roundtable on Aesthetics of Trust with Ed Fornieles, Sarah Friend, Paul Seidler and Sam Spike. Moderated by Laura Lotti and Penny Rafferty, with comments by Frances Liddell.” communication +1 10 (2023): https://doi.org/10.7275/cpo.1883 [link] 🔓
  • Lotti, Laura. “The Art of Tokenization: Blockchain Affordances and the Invention of Future Milieus.” Media Theory 3 (2019): 287-320.[link] 🔓
  • Lotti, Laura. ““Making sense of power”: Repurposing Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation for a mechanist approach to capitalism (by way of François Laruelle).” Platform 6 (2015): 22-33. [link] 🔓

Main projects

  • Individual project “Regenerative Exchanges in Southern and Western Europe: Histories and Futures of Agroecology Amidst the Polycrisis” — Hosted by the IHC and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (2024.09729.CEECIND). 2026-2029
  • Researcher in the project “Islands of Conviviality. An Illich Island Itinerary” — Coordinated by Jamie Allen (Island School of Social Autonomy) and funded by the Uniswap Foundation. 2024-2026 [link]

CONTACTS

Institute of Contemporary History
NOVA FCSH
Av. Berna, 26 C 1069-061 LISBOA
 Tel.: +351 21 7908300 ext. 1545
Email: ihc@fcsh.unl.pt

WORKING HOURS

Monday to Friday
10.00h – 13.00h / 14.00h – 18.00h

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