2026 call: Blueprints for a good digital society
For the fourth and final round of the Digital Good Research Fund, researchers will produce a ‘blueprint’ and a briefing document about what a particular aspect of social life or societal institution looks like in a good digital society, and how we achieve it.
Blueprint for…
Digital governance for urban administrations in the Global South in a good digital society
Fenna Imara Hoefsloot, University College London
Ayona Datta, University College London
Digital death in a good digital society
Eva Nieto McAvoy, King’s College London
Children’s critical engagement with technology in a good digital society: the case for hybrid arts education in formal schooling
Dylan Yamada-Rice, Falmouth University
John Potter, University College London
Environmentally sustainable use of generative AI in schools in a good digital society
Miles Berry, University of Roehampton
Arif Mahmud, University of Roehampton
Digital spaces to support survivors of human trafficking in a good digital society
Sohail Jannesari, King’s College London
Sharli Paphitis, King’s College London
Rest, calm and downtime in a good digital society
Tina Kendall, Anglia Ruskin University
Connected families in a good digital society
Murray Goulden, University of Nottingham
Jenny van Hooff, Manchester Metropolitan University
Digital platforms designed with and for autistic people in a good digital society
Nelya Koteyko, Queen Mary, University of London
Belén Barros Pena, City St George’s, University of London
A good city AI ecosystem: the case of Manchester
Richard Whittle, Salford University
Sherelle Fairweather, Manchester City Council
James Ransom, freelance
Inclusive and safe virtual reality in a good digital society
Oliver Merry, Sheffield Hallam University
Kate Whitfield, Sheffield Hallam University
Digital tools to support food sharing in a good digital society: the case of community-based initiatives for migrants/refugees
Sara Marino, London College of Communication, University of the Arts
Digital infrastructures of cooperative care: adult domiciliary social care in a good digital society
Genevieve Shanahan, Cardiff University
Maria Daskalaki, Oxford Brookes University
Emma Back, Equal Care Co-op
Maimoona Waseem, Nottingham Trent University
Digital-first museums and community-hosted heritage initiatives in a good digital society
Daniel McNeil, University of Birmingham
Chamion Caballero, The Mixed Museum
Dhiraj Murthy, University of Texas at Austin
Kennya Souza, University of Birmingham
Just and ethical film-making with/without Gen-AI in a good digital society
Sylvia Hayes, University of Exeter
Emilie Vrain, University of Oxford
Anti-ableist data and algorithmic systems in a good digital society
Denis Newman-Griffis, University of Sheffield
Bonnielin Swenor, Johns Hopkins University
Lauren Scattergood, University of Sheffield
2025 call: Building the Digital Good
In the third year of the network, we funded research that focuses on ‘Building the digital good’.
We funded six projects through the 2025 round:
Setting the standard: developing a benchmark for safe and effective AI in mental health support
This project will create a practical, evidence-informed benchmark to assess the safety, effectiveness, and ethical standards of large language models (LLMs) used in mental health and therapy. It will bring together experts and people with lived experience of therapy to co-design assessment tools that reflect the knowledge, skills, and values expected of qualified therapists.
Queer AI for the Ally
Queer AI for the Ally will build a prototype queer-first AI chatbot as a way of giving allies access to understandings about queer identities without imposing the burden of emotional labour on queer communities. It will ask, can AI technologies perform the kinds of emotional labour (most often categorised as inherently human) required for effective allyship in times of socio-political trouble?
Making harm visible: survivor-centred analysis of domestic homicide reviews using AI
Police domestic homicide reviews in the UK are often lengthy and result in vague recommendations. This project will work with survivors to scrutinise AI’s impact on equity and victim voice, aiming to create timely, actionable, and survivor-centred recommendations that recognise hidden harm like coercive control.
Accessible digital musical instruments for inclusive and social practices
Children with special educational needs and disabilities often miss out on playing music as they can struggle with the fine motor control and dexterity required for conventional musical instruments. This project will design and develop accessible digital musical instruments for children that use hand gestures, eye and head movements to support musical engagement.
Co-designing with energy communities in Colombia a digital management platform to promote sustainable local energy markets
Using an existing peer-to-peer energy transaction system in Colombia, this project will promote the uptake of community-based digital energy tools by co-designing and developing an interactive energy community management platform supporting collective energy production, consumption and exchange.
Building digital resilience through community-led AI: co-creating safety tools and capacity with minority communities in Wales
Minority civic groups in Wales face growing digital exclusion and online hate. This project will enhance AI chatbots to help minority civic navigate online harassment and hate speech. It will develop and evaluate AI tools to provide contextual guidance for responding to digital threats.
2024 call: Evaluating the Digital Good
For our second round of funding, we invited research proposals that would help us evaluate the digital good. By evaluation, we mean the systematic assessment of or judgement about whether digital developments and deployments contribute towards a good digital society.
We funded nine projects through the 2024 round:
Speculative Woolgathering: anticipatory evaluation of digital good
How can digital innovation help ensure that the supply chains in the textile and fashion industry are sustainable? And how can these digital futures be collaboratively co-designed and co-evaluated with key stakeholders?
Digitising Identity: navigating the digital immigration system and migrant experiences
How has the digitalisation of immigration status impacted migrants in the UK? How can different methodological approaches help evaluate these systems as a ‘digital good’ and, therefore, potentially improve them?
Exploring sustainable computing education with primary and secondary school teachers
Given the multifaceted role of computing in climate change, it is increasingly important to support children in thinking about connections between sustainability and technology within school curricula. But how are topics of sustainability currently integrated into computing education and how can teachers be involved in improving this?
Towards a sustainable Internet of Things (IoT)
With the rise of smart homes globally, it is anticipated that there will be over 29 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart homes worldwide by 2032. Given that most of these devices are increasingly treated as disposable, ending up as eWaste in landfills prematurely (particularly in the Global South), how can we build ‘repairability’ into the IoT?
DigiAdGood: creating digital advertising metrics for good
Online engagement is routinely measured by levels of ‘engagement’. But this basic metric encourages online advertisers to use attention-grabbing methods that don’t always align with human wellbeing. DigiAdGood seeks to create new digital advertising principles and measurement frameworks that go beyond this and better align human and business goals.
Evaluating civic technologies for local political engagement
Civic technologies are those tools and platforms that can, for example, provide information about community initiatives or allow citizens to raise local issues with councillors. Do they enhance public inclusion? And to what extent is this dependent on their design and meaningful integration within a system of representative institutions, community organisations, advocacy groups and research organisations?
Datatesting: co-developing computational methods for socially evaluating public data infrastructures
To what extent can datasets from open data initiatives address questions related to urgent societal issues? How can computational methods be used to evaluate this?
Can digital goods be neutral? Evaluating OpenStreetMap’s equity through participatory data visualisation
Using a transformative and empowering participatory process with Geochicas, a collective of women and LGBT+ mappers, to evaluate and surface how minoritised demographics are involved, recognised, or excluded from data production and decision-making in OSM.
What are they thinking? Developing a protocol to measure meta-perspectives in online environments
Prejudice is significantly prevalent in online communities, with 62% of internet users experiencing some sort of online abuse.
This project investigates how meta-perceptions can be used to encourage felt understanding between potential abusers and minority victims online – and thereby help tackle online abuse.
2023 call: Foundations for the Digital Good
Our first Digital Good Research Fund call, Foundations for the Digital Good, was an intentionally broad invitation for researchers to help lay the foundations for the network, by exploring how to define the digital good across different technologies, dimensions and perspectives.
We funded nine projects for the 2023 round:
Cooperativa digital: Creating a community-run mobile app in Brazil
What does a mobile app look like when it’s controlled by its users?
Digital health: the digital good in low-resource settings in Africa
How do the two intertwine when viewed through an inequalities and non-Western lens?
Digital mattering: A philosophical anthropology of mobile messaging as everyday human goodness
Reframing the question of what is a ‘good’ digital society to consider how goodness may start from small building blocks of everyday, mundane communication between individuals and their friends/family.
Exploring children’s attitudes towards notions of the digital good through hybrid arts practice
This project will host hybrid art workshops for children to imagine and shape a possible digital future where technology use is ethical, responsible, and inclusive
INDIGENIA: Generative AI for Indigenous futures and ‘digital good living’
The INDIGENIA project will explore digital inclusion for Indigenous peoples by engaging Indigenous participants with the newest wave of generative AI programmes.
Less damage done? Finding the good in defence tech
This project will consider which digital technologies are key and which absolutely need to be excluded for the sake of working towards a ‘digital better’ and develop a framework of investment principles.
Queer joy as a digital good
This project foregrounds queer joy as a practice of personal and collective resilience amidst a socio-political landscape of increasing queerphobia.
Re-Imagining AI with Afrofuturist speculative design
This project explores how emerging AI technologies can be used to benefit everyone, especially marginalised communities, by addressing issues of inequality, exclusion, and justice.
What does a ‘good’ digital welfare state look like?
This project brings together UK and Scandinavian experts to propose new frameworks for ‘good’ digital welfare.