RSM Seminar Series: Associate Professor Mariachiara Barzotto

Speaker: Associate Professor Mariachiara Barzotto

Title: When AI Reshapes the Learning Conditions of Professional Work: Epistemic Participation and Hazardous Forgetting

Date: Thursday, 5 November 2026

Time: 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Venue: Building 24, Copland, Room 1106, RSM Seminar Room

Nico Klenner is the host of this visit.

Abstract: 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in professional work as an epistemic technology that generates classifications, predictions, and recommendations, shaping how knowledge claims are produced, interpreted, and acted upon. While prior research has shown how professionals adapt to AI and reconfigure expertise around it, less attention has been paid to how AI transforms the learning conditions through which professional knowledge is developed and sustained over time. We address this gap by theorising AI-mediated work as a reconfiguration of epistemic participation, defined as professionals’ active involvement in observing, interpreting, contesting, and contextualising knowledge claims in the course of work. We develop a conceptual model showing that altered epistemic participation gives rise to three interdependent processes: AI-oriented learning, selective unlearning, and the preservation of endangered knowledge. We introduce hazardous forgetting to capture a central paradox of AI-mediated work: AI may improve immediate performance while weakening the conditions through which professional knowledge is learned, renewed, and sustained. We further theorise that sustainable professional learning trajectories arise when adaptation to AI preserves the participatory conditions needed for the renewal of knowledge. Together, these contributions offer a theory of sustainable professional learning trajectories under AI-mediated work.

Bio: 

Mariachiara Barzotto is an Associate Professor in International Management at the University of Bath School of Management and Co-Director of the School’s Future of Work Research Centre. Her research examines how artificial intelligence and other digital technologies reshape work, organisations, skills and regional economies, with particular interests in work design, knowledge and learning, skills development, and place-based policy. Her lastest work connects organisational transformations in work and knowledge with their wider consequences for skills, labour markets and regional development. More recently, her research has extended to the healthcare sector, where she examines how AI, automation and other advanced technologies are transforming professional knowledge, learning and work practices.

Her research has been published in journals including the Work, Employment and Society; Journal of Economic Geography, and Regional Studies. A former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow, she has led and contributed to research projects at UK and European levels and engages with policy and practitioner communities on the implications of technological change for workers, organisations, labour markets and regional development. She serves on the Editorial Board of Work, Employment and Society, as an Associate Editor of The Annals of Regional Science, and as Guest Editor of a Regional Studies Special Issue on artificial intelligence and regional development.