N. Katherine Hayles at the University of Bari: Integrated Cognition and Feminist Perspectives

N. Katherine Hayles is one of the most influential thinkers working on how cognition is distributed across human beings and technical systems. In her recent work on the Integrated Cognitive Framework, she argues that interpretation and decision-making do not reside in individual human minds alone: they emerge from assemblages in which humans, computational systems and other living beings process information together.

This speaks directly to PRESERVE. The analytics being developed for law enforcement do not merely support a decision taken elsewhere by a human operator — they take part in how a situation becomes legible in the first place, which patterns are noticed, and which people become visible or invisible in the data.

Reading this through feminist perspectives adds a further question: whose standpoint is embedded in a system, and what does objectivity mean when knowledge is always situated? These are precisely the concerns at the heart of PRESERVE’s social, ethical, legal, privacy and gender monitoring work.

On 5 October 2026 at 9:30 CEST, Prof. N. Katherine Hayles — Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Literature at Duke University — will deliver a lectio magistralis at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” (Palazzo Ateneo, Aula Magna “Cossu”), entitled:

“The Integrated Cognitive Framework: How It Aligns with Feminist Perspectives?”

The lecture will open the 2026–2027 academic year of the BA in Philosophy at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro.

The University of Bari “Aldo Moro” (UNIBA) is a partner in the PRESERVE project, which is supporting the event: