Veronica Barassi is an anthropologist, the mother of two daughters and Professor in Media and Communication Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS-HSG) at the University of St. Gallen, as well as the Chair of Media and Culture in the Institute of Media and Communication Management.

She believes in the importance of publicly engaged social research and consults regularly for companies and non-profit organizations worldwide. In 2018, the Information Commissioner’s Office of the UK Government used her research as evidence for the development of age appropriate design code -- and in 2019 the Irish Government invited Veronica Barassi to discuss AI Ethics at their Digital Summit.

Barassi's previous research focused on social media and political campaigning. She authored the Activism on the Web: Everyday Struggles against Digital Capitalism. Over the last three years, she investigated the impact of children’s data traces on their civic rights. Her most recent book Child | Data | Citizen: How Tech Companies are Profiling Us from before Birth will be published by MIT Press in December 2020.