Pirelli chair Visiting Professor at Princeton University French and Italian Department and Director of the Data Lab at LUISS University in Rome.
Columnist for La Stampa, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and anchor of the series “Gianni Riotta Incontra” Rai Storia, he was Editor-in-chief at Tg1 Rai and Il Sole 24 Ore, Deputy Editor at La Stampa and Corriere della Sera. Previously he served as a correspondent and columnist for Corriere della Sera and L’Espresso, based in New York.
In 2015, Riotta founded the digital start-up Catchy, which focuses on Big Data politics, culture and society. Catchy was recently awarded a grant by the Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund of Google to study the spread of false news and received a Seal of Excellence by the European Union.
In December 2017, Gianni Riotta was appointed among the 39 experts to the European Commission High Level Group (HLEG) on fake news and online disinformation – a theme he also deals with for the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Gianni Riotta is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Foreign Policy editorial board. He contributes to the BBC World Service.
His op-ed pieces have been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Foreign Affairs.
His books have been translated in many languages. “Prince of the Clouds”, a novel, was a finalist at “Prix Medicis” in France, won the “European Florio Award 2002” in the United Kingdom and was selected by BOL.COM as “Book of The Year 2001”. “Cambio di Stagione” was included in the Meridiano Mondadori Anthology of Italy’s best short stories 1900-2000. His recent books are “Il web ci rende liberi?” (Einaudi 2013) and “Il mondo di McCurry” (Mondadori 2015).
Foreign Policy and Prospect have included Gianni Riotta in their ranking of the “World 100 global thinkers”.
Gianni Riotta graduated in Logics at Palermo University and holds an MS from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 2011, he was awarded a Honoris Causa Degree by the Archivio di Stato, Rome, for his work protecting the Italian cultural heritage. In 2014, President Giorgio Napolitano awarded Gianni Riotta the Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Riotta is a board member of Oxfam Italia and Fondazione Memoriale Caduti per la Pace. He serves on the Fulbright Commission board and on the board of the Italian Academy Columbia University New York. He lives in New York and Rome.
An international top web influencer, Gianni Riotta tweets as @riotta, is active on Facebook as Gianni Riotta and runs the website www.riotta.it.
