Fernanda Duarte é doutora em Comunicação, Retórica e Mídia Digital pela North Carolina State University. É mestre em Comunicação pelo PPGCOM-UFMG, na área de concentração “Comunicação e Sociabilidade Contemporânea” e possui graduação em Comunicação Social/Publicidade e Propaganda pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (2003). Desenvolve pesquisa sobre mobilidade, computação pervasiva e poéticas digitais. Atuou como docente e coordenadora do Cursos de Especialização em Gestão da Comunicação Empresarial na PUC Minas Virtual, no Instituto de Educação Continuada da PUC Minas. Também tem interesse em estudos de tecnologia e educação, e enquanto servidora pública atuou como Superintendente de Supervisão e Políticas Públicas na Subsecretaria de Ensino Superior da Secretaria de Estado de Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior de Minas Gerais.

Born and raised in the mountains of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Fernanda graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication/Advertising in 2003 at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas), where your interest in media technologies research started. As a degree requirement, shes wrote a thesis with Maria Teresa Tavares that explored the poetics of interactivity in net art projects in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Right after graduation.  Worked at PUC Minas as a distance education tutor, and later on she are started as a instructor of record in distance education communication programs.  A couple of years after getting your BA, and started a MPhil program in Communication and Contemporary Sociability at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. In 2007, defended a thesis that investigated the relationship between the materiality of code, the graphic interface and the concept of aesthetic experience in software art projects. After getting degree,  took on the role of Director of the Strategic Communication Distance Education program, and started at a new position at the State Government of Minas Gerais to assist in the implementation of online education programs at the State Universities. This position led to a following role, as the Director of Public Policy for Higher Education at the State Secretariat of Science and Technology (2009-2010), before moving to the US to pursue a PhD in Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media at North Carolina State University. Your PhD dissertation investigated how the emergence of the Internet of Things and the embeddedness of sensors and networked connectivity onto things, physical spaces and biological bodies rearticulates embodied spaces, devises practices of self-making and forms of power in the governance of the self and society.