Research

Find out about the Centre's research programme

The ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF) supports new approaches to fairer and more sustainable societies. In order to achieve this, it is engaged in an ambitious programme of research, uniting experts from across the world to investigate three core questions: 

  1. What sociodigital futures are being claimed and made, and how, by which actors, across key domains of social life?
  2. What sociodigital futures are being made in the intersections of future-making claims, digital technologies and everyday practice?
  3. What capabilities and capacities are needed for sociodigital futures research and intervention?

These questions are each designed to interrogate sociodigital futures-in-the-making, and to identify means of intervention to address widening social and economic inequalities such as the climate change crisis.

Research highlights

For information about current research projects and activities taking place within the Centre, visit our research highlights pages.

Our research programme

The Centre's research programme investigates our three core questions questions from multiple perspectives:

Domains of Sociodigital Practice

Explore how digital devices, services and data are shaping - and being shaped by - the following everyday Domains of Sociodigital Practice:

  • Caring
  • Consuming
  • Learning
  • Moving (people and goods), and
  • Organising.

Technical Affordance Projects (TAPs)

The Technical Affordance Projects (TAPs) engage critically with the technical materialities and affordances of digital technologies, and sociodigital futures that are ‘in the making’. We focus on:

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality (AR/VR/MR)
  • High Performance Networks, and
  • Robotics.

Threads

Our interconnecting Threads weave across the Centre to drive integrated theoretical, methodological, collaborative, and design-focussed capabilities and capacity building for sociodigital futures research, engagement and interventions. They are:

  • Collaboration
  • Design
  • Methods
  • Theories.

Futures Studio

All members of the Centre belong to the Futures Studio, which convenes integrative activities to reflect on findings, support collective experimentation and materialise shared sociodigital futures-in-the-making.