IMCA participation at CCT Conference in London

IMCA was well represented at 2025 Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) conference with prof. Léna Pellandini-Simanyi, Ksenia Silchenko, Cristina Paradiso and Mosè Schwarz. The conference took place in vibrant King's Business School in the heart of London on 24-27 June, 2025.

IMCA’s PhD Student, Cristina Paradiso, presented a working paper “Consumers’ inclusion and exclusion processes in the digital financial context” co-authored with prof. Léna Pellandini-Simanyi. The paper, supported by SNSF grant on Social patterning of economic subjectivities and the digital transformation of retail finance in Switzerland , explores processes of inclusion and exclusion in the digital marketplace. Based on 30 interviews and observations, Cristina and Léna argue that exclusion rarely stems from a lack of physical access. Instead, digital devices are scripted with a specific consumer subject in mind, which creates exclusionary effects when used by consumers with different social backgrounds.

Ksenia Silchenko, Scientific Collaborator and Lecturer at IMCA, presented her progress on the FIR-funded project with a working paper titled “(De)normalization of Screen Consumption: Problematizations and Norm Creation in the Moralistic Market of Digital Wellbeing”. The paper examines what issues are problematized and what norms are created in the moralistic market of digital wellbeing from the perspective of the studies on consumer responsibilization.

For Mosè Schwarz, PhD student at IMCA, it was the first (hopefully, of many-many more) CCT conferences and a perfect occasion to explore the horizons of current research topics, extend his network, and test out his own PhD project ideas in a less formal setting. Welcome to CCT club, Mosè!