The Centre for Data Futures is pioneering participatory infrastructure across the entire AI lifecycle. We envision a future where communities - whether professional groups like GPs, judges and educators, or civic organisations and neighbourhoods - actively shape the AI systems that affect their lives and maintain agency over the data generated.

This requires two mutually reinforcing foundations:

Foundation 1: Data Empowerment

Communities control and benefit from the data they generate

• Without collective agency over data, participation becomes extraction.
• The missing piece: Trained data stewards - "the missing profession of the 21st century".

Foundation 2: Participatory AI Interfaces

AI systems that learn from, augment and adapt to collective human intelligence

• The breakthrough: LLM interfaces make meaningful collective participation possible in unprecedented ways.

The Intersection: Communities as Architects of AI-Augmented Futures

Participatory AI interfaces can demonstrate significant value independently. But they achieve their full transformative potential when combined with data empowerment.

Our team

Professor Sylvie Delacroix	Director of the Centre for Data Futures
Suha Mohamed	Innovation Director
Professor Elena Simperl	Theme lead: Data Empowerment
Professor Lorenzo Zucca	Theme lead: Agency in Action: Forms and Frameworks
Professor Rafael Calvo	Theme lead: Incentivising collective, long-term participation through human-computer interface design
Roger Taylor	Impact Lead
Joanna Pauk	Centre Manager
Dr Salvatore Greco	Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr Jacopo Domenicucci	Research Fellow