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About

Armanda Cetrulo is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of technological change, labor economics, and industrial organization, with a particular focus on how digitalization and automation are reshaping work across different sectors. Her most influential contribution, "Industry 4.0: revolution or hype?" (2019, 50 citations), critically reassesses the often-overstated claims surrounding emerging technologies, offering a more nuanced account of their actual impact on labor markets. This grounded skepticism carries through her subsequent work, where she consistently challenges deterministic narratives about automation displacing workers. Through rich qualitative methodologies — including over 50 interviews with HR managers, IT technicians, workers, and trade union delegates — Cetrulo has produced detailed case studies of automation in service industries, revealing the complexity that purely quantitative approaches tend to obscure. Her more recent research examines automation in the automotive sector and in cleaning services, demonstrating that even physically demanding, low-status jobs remain surprisingly resistant to robotic substitution. Collectively, her work makes a vital contribution to understanding why the automation transition is slower, messier, and more sector-specific than popular discourse suggests, offering important insights for policymakers, workers, and fellow researchers alike.