| Dr. Maria Sourbati School of Art and Media, University of Brighton, UK ResearchGate Webpage ORCID |
Dr Sourbati’s expertise combines communication policy, digital media and older people, smart mobility, and age relations. Her research explores the social and policy dimensions of digital technology adoption, with a particular focus on age relations and the lived experiences of older people. She investigates the tensions between top-down, policy-driven diffusion of digital innovations and locally situated engagement with ICTs. Dr Sourbati’s current work examines the societal implications of emerging technologies, especially in relation to mobility, age, and data. She has secured funding from national and international research councils, local authorities, and not-for-profit organisations.
She is currently the UK lead for the AGEAI study, a multi-country research project examining discourses and practices surrounding the deployment of Artificial Intelligence systems and services in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the UK. Within AGEAI, her research focuses on: Older adults’ experiences and perceptions of smart mobility in urban environments, including how they interpret AI in mobility contexts and how data on their movement and travel is collected; The assumptions embedded in the design of smart mobility services, and how age and (in)equalities are constructed and reflected within these systems.
Dr Sourbati’s work has been widely published in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, books, and international conferences. She has been invited to contribute to policy workshops hosted by national governments and the Council of Europe.
Recent publications
Sourbati, M., Stypińska, J. (2025). Upskilling the Old, a Quarter Century on: Media Literacies, AI and Older People in Public Policy Discourses. In: Gao, Q., Zhou, J. (eds) Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. HCII 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15811. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-92712-6_14
Sourbati, M (2023) Age bias on the move: The case of smart mobility. In A. Rosales, M. Fernández-Ardèvol, & J. Svensson (Eds.), Digital Ageism. How it Operates and Approaches to Tackling it. Routledge. [Open access]
Sourbati, M., & Behrendt, F. (2021). Smart mobility, age and data justice. New Media & Society, 23(6), 1398-1414. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820902682 [Open access]