ESRC Digital Good Network

Want to connect with others to form teams for a Digital Good Research Fund bid? You have until 27 March to apply to be part of our sandpit event. The sandpit takes place on Tuesday 1 April 2025, 13:00-15:00, and will be an opportunity to meet researchers and stakeholders across disciplines to share ideas and build project teams. Find out more and submit an expression of interest here: https://lnkd.in/exhgyxJE Please note that the sandpit is optional. You do not need to attend to apply for our funding. Attending the sandpit does not guarantee that you will be part of a bid team or that you will receive funding. ESRC: Economic and Social Research Council, UK Research and Innovation, EPSRC, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

RESEARCH FUNDING AVAILABLE: APPLY NOW Digital Good Research Fund, Round 3: ‘Building the digital good’ The aim of the ESRC Digital Good Network is to enhance our collective understanding of what a good digital society looks like and how we get there. Our research fund is now open for applications, on the theme of ‘Building the digital good’. Proposed projects may do one or more of the following: ?? generate or rework digital technologies with the intention of achieving the digital good ?? explore how the digital good might be built in to specific technologies, contexts and domains ?? consider the role of diverse communities, sectors and organisations in building the digital good ?? test methodological innovations for building the digital good. Proposals should also build on our research and work on evaluating the digital good. As part of our support for applicants, we will also be holding the following optional events:? ?? 24 March: a Q&A webinar ?? 1 April: an online sandpit to connect with other researchers or relevant stakeholders ?? 29 April: a support webinar for early career researchers Details about these events can be found here: https://lnkd.in/e-p6GyjD Funding available: ￡75,000 (￡60,000 at 80% fEC) Deadline to apply: 26 June 2025 Find out more: https://lnkd.in/e2iKEXaY

It's a tremendous privilege to be on the panel of experts for the ESRC Digital Good Network and it was a delight to be part of their annual gathering as a policy professional (i.e. as I always stress, not as a company representative). I love and respect technology, ever since I touched an Amiga back in the ancient times (Battle Chess, can't beat it). Apart from being a professional I'm also always longing for my academia days and being able to help smart people researching digital society feels very good for the soul. There are two things I banged on about these days. Ask the user and always remember, the ecosystem is important but not always visible or understood. What happens behind the screen, the players and how they are set up, how things work, the transparency, the infrastructure, the accessibility, the legislation - they all matter. Good analysis and evaluation takes into account as much as possible. Please do follow the work of the network, fascinating research is happening and more and more good work is being published. #DigitalGood

It was an honour to contribute to the ESRC Digital Good Network's panel discussion at BBC "What does a good digital society look like?" I shared insights from my project, Cooperativa Digital, which aimed to empower NGOs in Brazil to have agency over a mobile app for charitable donations through a Digital Good practice that uses community-led design and governance frameworks. Thank you to the Digital Good Network team for fostering these important conversations #DigitalEquity #PlatformCooperatives #Commons #Codesign #DigitalFutures #DigitalInnovation Imagination Lancaster, Lancaster University

I was really pleased to be involved in discussions with the ESRC Digital Good Network today, thinking creatively about a Digital Good Index. I wholly support their vision of working inclusively and collectively to describe a good digital society and that involves good digital tech. For me, that is tech that is: ??Environmentally sustainable ??Reliable and can be shown to be reliable ??Safe and secure ??? Built with and by communities and…. ?? Being economically accessible enough to allow that. This is not about technologies taken individually but about systems and interdependencies. Thanks so much to Gina Neff helen kennedy Ruth Lauener and many great participants I met today! https://digitalgood.net

Susan Oman, one of our Associate Researchers, advocates for a national government digital strategy for culture, in an article for Arts Professional.

A very warm welcome to Media City and the BBC as we ESRC Digital Good Network prepare for our two day summit! We're bringing together industry, international fellows, policy, and civil society to explore and co-create our forthcoming #digitalgoodindex. As ever, we will welcome an interdisciplinary keynote speaker and this time it's Nancy Baym, who brings insights from her experience in academia as well as in her role at Microsoft Research. I look forward to engaging in dialogue with her very soon. And before you ask - yes, #participation and #inclusion are central strands!

The Transport AI Innovation Centre (TRAICE) is offering an exciting new fully funded PhD opportunity at Loughborough University, looking at cycling tracking data. DRIVE Research Cluster: Creating the Inclusive Strava Cyclist This research focuses on making the data collected by Strava – a popular fitness app – more inclusive. It will explore the current Strava cyclist, understand how this compares to the experience of cycling for people in different communities, and develop an Inclusive Strava Cyclist that would underpin better, more inclusive, cycling infrastructure. Find out more: https://lnkd.in/e5ZkRmJ5

On Monday, March 3rd, we hosted the second workshop for our ESRC Digital Good Network project: Speculative Woolghatering. We brought together farmers, regulators, technologists, textile manufacturers, and suppliers—including our project partner Sustainable Rope Ltd—to tackle key challenges in the supply chain, such as: ?? Lack of data curation, sharing, and transparency ?? The undervaluing of wool as a sustainable material ?? Climate change threats to land management ?? Inadequate infrastructure leading to wool being underutilised Through a participatory and co-creative approach, we have developed speculative objects—‘design fictions’—that represent possible futures for wool. These help us examine the implications of digital technologies and evaluate where digital good exists in shaping a sustainable industry. Next, we look forward to the ESRC Digital Good Network Summit 2025, which starts on Thursday, to continue discussing what a good digital society looks like! Dr Anabel Gutierrez, Royal Holloway, University of London, School of School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, University of London Dr Louise Manning, University of Lincoln Dr Naomi Jacobs, Lancaster University Dr David Pérez Ojeda Pérez, Lancaster University Dr Peter Craigon, University of Nottingham Dr Emily Birch, Lancaster University Kate Drury, Doctoral Researcher & Owner Sustainable Rope Ltd You can read more about the project here: https://lnkd.in/ejCy6XNv

???? Big news! So happy to see the positive results of some of the work I did during my internship with Unravel Health This was a mammoth grant application that I worked on with the super Alexandra Oti and it’s great to see that the team are going to be supported in their next steps in the mission to transform hormone health ?? Thanks to ESRC Digital Good Network for supporting my internship last year to work with Unravel! Liza Levy Veronika Bridgman ????