Dr Sara Marino

Biography

Dr Sara Marino is a Senior Lecturer in Communications and Media at London College of Communication.

As a digital anthropologist and critical media scholar, her research examines the relationships between digital media, migration, transnationalism and social change. Her work brings together interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how digital technologies and platforms shape experiences of identity, belonging, solidarity and displacement, while also examining the power relations, infrastructures and forms of governance that underpin them.

Sara’s research broadly addresses digital media and migration, with her recent work examining the following themes:

- Digital migration and refugee media
- Diaspora, transnationalism and digital identities
- Digital solidarity and humanitarian technologies
- Digital platforms, storytelling and migrant voice
- Borders, surveillance and datafied migration
- Digital ethnography and critical approaches to technology
- Ethics, care and socially responsible digital innovation

Sara has held a range of international academic leadership and advisory roles. She served as Chair of the ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media section (2021–2026), contributing to the development of an international research community working across media, migration and digital cultures, and to the growth of the doctoral and post-doctoral community of new media and migration scholars. As Chair, she organised international conferences and PhD workshops in The Netherlands, Estonia, Slovenia and Czech Republic.

Since 2025, she has successfully taught a Digital Ethnography and Ethics course for PhD students at the University of Zurich.

From 2026-2027, Sara leads the Digital Good Network funded project "Digital tools to support food sharing in a good digital society: the case of community-based initiatives for migrants/refugees" as Principal Lead, working with community partners Migrateful and Plateful Cafe. This project focuses on community-based food-sharing initiatives involving refugee and migrant communities to explore for the first time how digital tools increasingly shape how such initiatives are organised, accessed, and sustained in a good digital society.



Her expertise as ethnographer and ethics expert resulted in her collaborating with several international and national partners. From 2022-2025 she worked as a senior researcher and digital ethnography expert on the EU-CHANSE funded ReDigIm: Redistributive Imaginaries – Digitalisation, Culture, and Prosocial Contribution project. ReDigIm was a 3-year research and knowledge exchange project delivered by a consortium of five academic partners and five cooperation partners, interrogating the social and institutional practices that facilitate prosocial contribution in contemporary European societies, namely taxation, philanthropy, charity and mutual aid.

From 2021-2022 she also worked as an ethics adviser on the AHRC-funded Digital Arts – Refugee Engagement project. DA-RE was an exploratory research project aiming at observing how arts-based activities in combination with digital literacy can develop the capabilities of refugee youth in Turkey and Bangladesh. For this project, Sara collaborated with academic and non-academic partners in the UK, Syria, Turkey and Bangladesh.

Her expertise has also led to invitations to contribute to research and policy discussions beyond academia, including as a speaker at the European Parliament and as an advisor on the theme of "datafied migration and border control regimes" at the EU funded COST Action Data Matters: Sociotechnical Challenges of European Migration and Border Control (DATAMIG) in 2024.

She is the author of two monographs 'Mediating the Refugee Crisis. Digital Solidarity, Humanitarian Technologies and Border Regimes' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and 'L'ebbrezza del potere: vittime e persecutori' (Ombre Corte, 2009) and of an e-book 'Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Trajectories on Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship' (Inter-disciplinary Press, 2014).

Alongside her research, Sara is an experienced educator and academic leader. At LCC she has been Course Leader for the BA Contemporary Media Cultures and MA Media, Communication and Critical Practice, and has taught across digital cultures, social media, media and migration, digital humanitarianism, activism, media power and research methods. Her teaching is research-informed and combines critical scholarship with a strong commitment to inclusive and vocational pedagogy.

She is committed to supporting ECRs and PGR students in their professional development. As an experienced PhD supervisor, Sara is keen to hear from prospective PhD researchers focusing on media, migration, platform cultures and social innovation practices.

Before joining LCC in 2018, Sara was a Lecturer in Communications at Bournemouth University and a Teaching Fellow and Programme Director for the MA Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London. She has also held academic positions at the University of Westminster, Central Saint Martins and Farnborough College of Technology.