Monica Porzionato
Postdoc
Primary research areas
Organizational communication
Affect and affective atmospheres
Sensory, atmospheric and digital/net-nography
Even the most complex and abstract societal issues emerge at the level of ordinary sensory and affective orientations. To promote change, I study the inertia and potential of everyday encounters.
I hold a PhD in Media and Communication Studies (specialisation in Strategic Communication), which I obtained from Lund University in February 2025. I also hold a BA in Communication from the University of Padua, an MA in Semiotics from the University of Bologna, and an MA in Women's and Gender Studies from Utrecht University.
In my research, I explore the intersections between organisational communication theory and new materialist and non-representational theorising. This brings me to investigate how communication operates affectively and atmospherically, as well as how organisations emerge from habitual encounters between people and spaces. In my PhD dissertation, Feeling the Changing Climate, I propose an affective approach to the strategic communication of floods in the tourist city of Venice, wherein I explore how climate change is constituted through the sustainment of affective atmospheres, thus of seemingly ordinary ways in which Venice ought to look and feel like in the midst of climate change. The thesis was awarded “outstanding PhD dissertation in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Lund University” in the year 2025 by the Vetenskapssocieteten i Lunds.
I am currently part of the research project “The double edge of social media influencing: Participatory antagonism and communicative resilience in the Nordics” (INFLU-NORD), a research collaboration between Copenhagen Business School, Lund University and the University of Helsinki (NordForsk, 2026-2029). In this project, I research the role of social media influencing practices in the creation and maintenance of anti-democratic organizing.