The public data lab is an experimental ✨ space ✨ for critical, creative, socially engaged research with and about ↬ data, digital media, software, platforms, infrastructures, the internet.

We explore how digital technologies shape ways of knowing and responding to issues such as climate breakdown, deepening inequality, biodiversity collapse, public health crises, intersecting discrimination, resurgent authoritarianism. We also explore how these technologies might be reconfigured to support other ways of knowing and living together.

We develop methods, tools, documentation, investigations, artworks to nurture collective inquiry, care, curiosity, imagination, intervention, solidarity.

We work with many different kinds of groups and organisations, such as: Amnesty International, An Việt Archives, besea.n, Birdcall, BuzzFeed News, The Centre for Public Data, CIVICUS, DeSmog, End Violence and Racism Against ESEA Communities (EVR), ESEA Hub, ESEA Sisters, European Forest Institute, European Journalism Centre, First Draft, Forest Bathing Institute, Gehl, Global Data Barometer, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, Global Witness, The Guardian, Internet Archive, The Latin American Open Data Initiative, Media Matters, Open Knowledge Foundation, NOS, Politico Europe, Possible, Surrey Wildlife Trust, Tax Justice Network, UN Foundation, ZKM.

We grow critical, situated engagements with digital technologies, drawing on fields such as: feminist science and technology studies, new media studies, internet studies, platform studies, infrastructure studies, data studies, algorithm studies, app studies, critical AI studies.

Since 2017 we have developed 34 projects with 198 contributors from across 79 groups and organisations. If you’d like to learn and explore with us, you can read more about how we work. 🌱🐢🐨🪼🌕🌌✨