About

How can we live well with new and emerging technologies? 

Using approaches that are informed by the combined resources of our disciplines, the Institute helps us create better digital futures. Bringing together colleagues from SHAPE (Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines), STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and Health disciplines, the Digital Futures Institute advances research and public understanding of the contexts, consequences and possibilities of technology by reframing what are usually thought of as technical challenges - to be solved through technical fixes - as human and social challenges that require broader, and more collaborative, ways of knowing and responding.

Through its work, the Institute reconsiders the relationship between the individual and technology (understanding ‘technology’ in the broadest sense) in society, culture and everyday life. The Institute draws on a wide range of research expertise, with the aim of bringing the critical, ethical, imaginative, theoretical and historical perspectives of the SHAPE disciplines into generative engagement with technological innovation.

Through our fellowships, projects and activities we explore questions such as:

• How can we ensure the practice of coding and technological build is rooted in understandings of diversity, discrimination, culture and ethics, rather than having these issues addressed as an afterthought?
• How can we ensure that new technologies are integrated into our lives in ways that promote equity and inclusion, working with, rather than against, fundamental human needs?
• How can we empower individuals and communities through greater awareness (and self-awareness) to shape the development and use of technologies in their lives?
• How might technologies be configured, rethought and repurposed to address simultaneous and overlapping global crises of public health, political trust, social inequalities and ecological breakdown?
• How can we learn from a history of the reception and integration of new technologies  to better confront the challenges of today?
• Overall, the Institute addresses a fundamental question that has become urgent in recent years: how do we ensure that human needs, and human good, are prioritised in the development and implementation of technology?

Our research centres

Representing our work across the key dimensions of mind, body, culture, society and governance.

Centre for Attention Studies

Studying the concept of attention from a number of combined perspectives.

Centre for Digital Culture

Interdisciplinary research centre promoting research and public engagement with digital culture.

Centre for Technology and the Body

Collaborative, critical investigation of the relationship between technology and the body.

Leadership Team

Steering Committee