Betti Marenko

Betti Marenko is a transdisciplinary theorist and academic currently serving as Reader in Design and Techno-Digital Futures at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, where she also leads Contextual Studies for Product and Industrial Design. She simultaneously holds the position of WRHI Specially Appointed Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Department of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering.

Her educational background includes a PhD and MA in Sociology from the University of East London, and a BA (Hons) from Universita di Urbino, Italy. She is fluent in Italian, with full professional proficiency.

Marenko's research spans process philosophies, design studies, and critical technologies, with a particular focus on algorithmic culture, digital uncertainty, and future studies. Her work investigates the relationships between design, society, and culture, and their role in shaping futures through transdisciplinary approaches that bridge philosophy, design, and technology critique. She develops speculative and pragmatic interventions that mobilize design practice to address contemporary challenges.

Her publication record reveals consistent engagement with themes of techno-animism, hybrid ecologies, and the implications of planetary computation. Recent work shows increasing focus on uncertainty frameworks, the politics of algorithmic systems, and the development of alternative methodologies for engaging with technological futures. Her research demonstrates a trajectory from earlier work on body modification to contemporary concerns with digital materiality and speculative design.

As Principal Investigator for the Erasmus+ project FUEL4Design [Future Education and Literacy for Designers], she develops curriculum innovation tools for teaching futures to designers. She is currently completing a monograph titled 'The Power of Maybes. Between Prediction and Potential in Algorithmic Culture,' which examines how algorithmic governmentality shapes knowledge-production and modes of existence.

Marenko serves as Associate Editor of the journal Design and Culture and has co-edited significant volumes including 'Designing Smart Objects in Everyday Life' (Bloomsbury 2021) and 'Deleuze and Design' (Edinburgh University Press 2015), which established new theoretical frameworks for design practice and research.