Members:
Juliane Jarke (spokesperson), Ren Aldridge, Sérgio Barbosa, Gwendolin Barnard, Laurène Cheilan, Anja Eder, Carla Greubel, Pia Grumeth-Zechner, Sabine Haring-Mosbacher, Laura Kunz, Karin Scaria-Braunstein, Fabian Schaider, Alexandra Seyi, Sara Skardelly, Johannes Woschizka, Leonie Winterpacht, Thomas Zenkl
Visiting fellows:
Stefanie Büchner (Leibniz University Hanover), Łukasz Dulęba (University of Poznań), Iiris Lehto (University of Eastern Finland), Helen Manchester (University of Bristol), Laura Pajula (University of Jyväskylä), Steve Symons (University of Sussex), Saemi Young (Simon Fraser University), Irina Zakharova (Leibniz University Hannover)
Description
The research focus (RF) Digital Societies investigates the ways in which data-driven systems reconfigure how we work, learn, and live (together). This means that we are interested in how processes of digitalisation and datafication of social life lead to organisation- and domain-specific transformations of knowledge regimes, practices, and power structures.
We intervene in the often-purported inevitability of digitalisation through participatory and community-engaged research with the aim to identify possibilities for inclusive, sustainable and socially just digital transformations. To do so, we collaborate with local, regional, national and international actors across a range of social domains, including education, labour, healthcare, demographic ageing and feminist activism.
The Graz Sociodigital and Participatory Futures Studio (GraSP Futures Studio) provides us with a dedicated physical space in which we conduct participatory research, and which we use for teaching, academic events and science communication to open up futures-making to different people and strengthen their capacities for imagining digital futures otherwise.
Our research is based on Engaged and Digital Sociology as well as the interdisciplinary fields of feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS), Critical Data Studies and Futures Studies. Methodologically, we employ a range of empirical research methods, including qualitative and quantitative methods, computational methods as well as arts-based and design-oriented methods.