Alexis Karkotis

Alexis Karkotis Service type Assistant Coordinator Current Post Visiting Scientist at Future Worlds Center Degree(s) Social Anthropology PhD BA (Social Anthropology) BSc Ecology University(ies) Arizona State University University of Bristol Specialization(s) Indigeneity, Politicisation Emerging Technologies Social/Academic Working at the crossroads of Ecology, Anthropology, Future Design and Science.

Alexis Karkotis is a Visiting Scientist at Future World Center and an Assistant Coordinator at the Reinventing Democracy in the Digital Era Project. He is responsible for coordinating the Indigenous Communities Initiative within the Reinventing Democracy Project.

Alexis is an Independent Researcher in the fields of Anthropology, Emerging Technologies and Ecology. He graduated in 2006 from Arizona State University with a BA in Anthropology and BSc in Ecology and moved on to the University of Bristol where he completed his PhD in Social Anthropology.

For his doctorate research he conducted three years long ethnographic fieldwork research amongst the Ngöbe-Bugle indigenous people. In his thesis he focused on formation of concentrated communities, politicization and resistance against large scale developmental projects, transition from polygamy to monogamy, animism and material culture practices. In 2013 he returned to the field with a grant from the Smithsonian Institute to explore ‘The Adoption and Use of Digital Tools Amongst the Ngöbe’ which introduced him to the accelerated field of Digital Humanities. Thereafter he begun collaborating with a London based future-facing multi-disciplinary design lab where he was in charge of the Incubator Section, the foresight section of Lab. This forward looking department of the BornAnIdea Laboratory practices future thinking analysis of global societal events through critical analysis of the accelerated changes experienced in our times.

His current international multi-disciplinary work combines his knowledge of ecology and expertise on indigenous cultures with emerging technologies and digital cultures. His latest co-authored journal article due to be published by National Taipei University of Technology explores the notion of cultural robotics, arguing that designers, artists and engineers should work closely with ethnographers and social scientists so that the production of robotic technologies takes into consideration cultural differences and promotes local knowledge. In a previous published co-authored article they argued that robots design and manufacture should take inspiration from indigenous material culture so that its production becomes a meaningful venture rooted on the household level.

Relevant projects

• Reinventing democracy (YiA 1.3)
• Indigenous Communities Initative