New team memberPublished on 03.09.2026

SAIS welcomes Dr Loïc Riom as Senior Researcher

We are delighted to welcome Dr Loïc Riom, who recently joined the Institute Human-IST as Senior Researcher in the research group SAIS dedicated to the Social Studies of Algorithms, Internet & Society. At SAIS, he will contribute to the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)-funded project “Performing Artificial Intelligence: Governance, Agency, Action – An Interdisciplinary Inquiry", with a particular focus on the governance of Artificial Intelligence in Switzerland.

Loïc Riom holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation at PSL University (Paris). His research examines the intersections of markets, technological innovation, and culture. Combining ethnographic inquiry with digital methods and controversy mapping, he investigates how technologies, lived experiences, and political processes become intertwined.

Before joining the University of Fribourg, Loïc Riom worked at the University of Lausanne, where he examined the changing dynamics of cultural and creative industries in platform-driven economies  as well as the rise of venture capital and its global circulation beyond the technology sector. His work has been published in leading journals, including Science, Technology & Human Values, Science as Culture, Social Media + Society, and Journal of Cultural Economy. His forthcoming monograph, Making Music Matter: Recomposing Live Music in a Platform-Driven Economy, will be published next year by Bristol University Press. 

Since 2020, Loïc Riom has served as Co-President of STS-CH, the Swiss Association for the Studies of Science, Technology and Society.

SAIS, the research group on the social Studies of Algorithms, Internet, & Society, is an interdisciplinary team that analyses digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet as sociotechnical phenomena. It is lead by Prof. Anna Jobin and part of the interfaculty Human-IST Institute at the University of Fribourg, which brings together research on the interactions between humans and digital technologies.