Hello, and welcome to my page. I am Banu Saatçi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Milan, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods. My research sits at the intersection of technology and work: I use ethnographic methods to understand how skills emerge through practice, how judgment is displaced by automation, and how organizations can manage technological transformation responsibly.

From 2023 to 2026 I have worked on the Up-Skill Horizon Europe project, conducting fieldwork across European firms navigating Industry 5.0. My work examines how new technologies, from collaborative robots to AI systems, reshape the relationship between human expertise and organizational capability. In October 2025 I was a visiting researcher at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick.

My second line of work looks at the fitness industry as a setting where work is governed by brands and licenses rather than by employers: passion-driven self-employment among group-fitness instructors, and how standardized fitness formats build brands and communities.

Previously, I completed my PhD at Aarhus University in Human-Computer Interaction, supported by the Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship for EMEA. My doctoral research focused on hybrid meetings and video-mediated collaboration at the workplace.

I speak Turkish, English, German, Spanish, and Italian.

News

• September 2026 – Presented two papers (with S. Addolorato) at the 34th EASM Conference in Thessaloniki, supported by an EASM Early Career Scholarship.
• September 2026 – “When Fitness Meets Music: Symbiotic Value Co-Creation in the Zumba–Latin Music Ecosystem” (with S. Addolorato) presented at the XXXVII AEMARK International Marketing Congress, Málaga.
• August 2026 – “Spot New Tech Skills Emerging From the Workforce” (with C. Ivory and M.L. Toraldo) published in MIT Sloan Management Review.
• August 2026 – “Stewarding Skills in Technological Change: Organising Responsibility as Situated Moral Practice” (with C. Ivory, M.L. Toraldo and C. Warhurst) presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Philadelphia and nominated for the Responsible Research Award of the OMT Division.
• April 2026 – Poster “Responsible Management and Skill Transformation in AI-Mediated Workplaces” presented at BIG.AI@MIT, Boston.