Dr. Deborah Barcella

Biography

Deborah Barcella is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Media and Journalism (IMeG) at the Università della Svizzera italiana, where she specializes in the intersection of web history, media history, and marketing. Her doctoral project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), focused on the early history of the World Wide Web through archival research conducted at CERN, with an emphasis on communication and branding strategies that facilitated the public adoption of the Web in the 1990s. The findings of her dissertation have been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at national and international conferences. Currently, she is engaged in the SNSF-funded Agorà project aimed at disseminating the history of the Web to the Swiss population. In this role, she has developed collaborations with the SUPSI Institute of Design to promote dialogue between research and society through participatory activities and public events. In addition to her research, she serves as the Early-Career Scholar Representative for the Communication History Division of the International Communication Association and contributes to organizing international academic initiatives such as the Documentary Summer School at the Locarno Film Festival and the ECREA Communication History Workshop 2025. Deborah has taught courses in Communication Classics at the PhD level and has previously served as a teaching assistant for courses on Management, Media History, and Digital Cultures.

Research Interests