For best experience please turn on javascript and use a modern browser!
You are using a browser that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Please upgrade your browser. The site may not present itself correctly if you continue browsing.

Dr. V. (Valentina) Carraro

Assistant professor
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
GPIO: Political and Economic Geographies
Area of expertise: Digital geographies, Political geography and critical geopolitics, Critical cartography and critical GIS, Feminist political economy, Political ecology, Postcolonial and decolonial theory

Visiting address
  • Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
  • Room number: B4.09
Postal address
  • Postbus 15629
    1001 NC Amsterdam
  • Profile

    I am Assistant Professor at the GPIO and is affiliated with the AISSR programme group on Political and Economic Geographies. My research broadly considers how emerging digital technologies and practices transform people, places and the relations between them. At UvA, I am on the steering board of the RPA AI & Politics, and co-director of the RPA Global Digital Cultures

    My book, ‘Jerusalem Online: Critical Cartography for the Digital Age’, has been published by Palgrave-MacMillan in 2021 and examines the politics of web-maps in/of Jerusalem, drawing on ontological social theory and feminist technoscience. Prior to joining UvA, I held a Fondecyt postdoc fellowship at CIGIDEN / Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago.

  • Research interests
    • Digital geographies
    • Political geography and critical geopolitics
    • Critical cartography and critical GIS
    • Feminist political economy
    • Political ecology
    • Postcolonial and decolonial theory
  • Teaching

    Master's courses

    • Supervisions of masters theses for the MSc Human Geography, MRes Urban Studies and MRes International Development Studies
    • The Capitalocene: Understanding Unequal Exchange and Environmental Conflict, MSc International Development Studies and MRes International Development Studies, Lecturer/co-coordinator (2024-), with Crelis Rammelt (2024-) and Joeri Scholtens (2024-)
    • Advanced Political Geography, MSc Human Geography, co-taught with Virginie Mamadouh (2022-)
    • Research Methodologies 2: Spatial Analyses,  MSc Human Geography & MSc Urban and Regional Planning, Lecturer/Coordinator, co-taught with Yang Chen, (2021-)

    Bachelor's courses

    • Research Project: Abroad, BSc Human Geography and Planning, Lecturer (2024-)
  • Research projects

    AI geopolitics between domination and competition (2025-2026)

    In 2024, OpenAI removed the clause prohibiting military applications of its technologies. This change signals a broader trend, whereby geopolitical actors use AI to pursue their agendas. My project investigates this trend, combining insights from social science research on AI and critical geopolitics. It focuses on three groups - consultants, academics and companies – with particular influence on geopolitical knowledge. Drawing on discourse analysis and ethnographic observations, it asks: how does AI feature in, and transform, geopolitical storylines? Funded through an NWO XS-grant, the project contributes to the emerging literature on AI geographies, and brings a much-needed critical perspective on societal debates about AI.

    Cable geopolitics: Situating digital infrastructural sovereignty beyond US-China polarization (2024-2029)

    Digital platforms, devices, and infrastructures play an increasingly prominent role in national geopolitical agendas. Amid the enduring centrality of US-based tech companies within computing networks, and China's growing influence over different layers of the global stack, many states are grappling with how to assert their digital infrastructural sovereignty. As they try to materialize their digitalization projects, states are required to navigate increasingly tangled webs of global digital power. Our project seeks to understand how digital infrastructural sovereignty is performed and negotiated beyond US-China disputes, at the global, regional, and local levels. With a focus on subsea and subterrestrial cables – critical infrastructures that operate across borders –, we draw on different regional contexts to ask:  How do state and non-state actors negotiate their digital infrastructural sovereignty amidst rising tensions between East and West, and persisting geoeconomic asymmetries between the North and the South? We approach this question through different entry points, zooming into the circulating imaginaries and situated practices enrolled in making, maintaining, and governing transnational fibre optic cable networks. The research will contribute to emerging geographical research on digital sovereignty, combining STS sensitivities for situated technological practices with a post-colonial understanding of the macro-political and economic inequalities shaping infrastructural projects and agendas.The project is funded through an AISSR Starter Grant, in collaboration with Virginie Mamadouh, Carolina Maurity Frossard and Pablo Zagt Hernandez. 

     

  • Publications

    2025

    • Fuentealba, R., Flores Bellé, P., Carraro, V., Arias Aróstegui, E., González Gálvez, M., Swistun, D. A., Usón, T. J., Henrique, K. P., & de Castro, F. (2025). Latin American perspectives on slow disasters. Disaster Prevention and Management, 34(6), 18-34. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-12-2024-0333

    2023

    2022

    • Carraro, V., Kelly, S., Vargas, J. L., Melillanca, P., & Valdés-Negroni, J. M. (2022). Undoing disaster colonialism: a pilot map of the pandemic's first wave in the Mapuche territories of Southern Chile. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, 31(1), 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-03-2021-0106 [details]

    2021

    2018

    2022

    2020

    • Visconti, C., Carraro, V., & Inzunza, S. (2020). Collective mapping as a methodology for participatory, disaster-responsive urban planning: lessons from Chile. In Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Risks and Disasters (Vol. 3). Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Pesquisas sobre Desastres –Universidade Federal Do Rio Grande Do Norte. https://www.grin.com/document/979893

    2020

    2019

    • Carraro, V. (2019). Jerusalem Online: Critical Cartography after the Ontological Turn. CityU Scholars.
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    No ancillary activities