Leonie Winterpacht
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Leonie Winterpacht is a PhD researcher at the Center for Data Science in Business and Society (BANDAS) and the department of Sociology at the University of Graz, Austria. She is part of the FWF and DFG-funded research unit ComAI (communicative AI: Researching the Automation of Societal Communication) and focuses her research mainly on the intersection of emerging technologies and age(ing).
In her dissertation she explores how older adults use and appropriate communicative AI (e.g. ChatGPT, Alexa, ElliQ) in their daily lives, as well as the bodily, technological and spatio-temporal entanglements that emerge. While critically reflecting on how communicative AI is anticipated as a promising approach for supporting “healthy” ageing, managing well-being, taking over care tasks and quantifying ageing bodies. The project is based on ethnographic and participatory fieldwork in Austria, Germany and the UK and is supervised by Prof. Dr. Juliane Jarke and Prof. Dr. Helen Manchester.
Leonie Winterpacht holds an MA in cultural anthropology with a specialization in digital and diversity studies as well as a BA in art history from the University of Tübingen, Germany. During her studies she focused particularly on (in)visibilisation practices and the enactment of body multiples among people with disabilities on social media. Her research interests lie in digital anthropology, intersectional approaches such as crip and queer theory as well as disability and ageing studies and feminist STS.