Open Lab
Interdisciplinary participatory research in Human-Computer Interaction, Collaborative Computing and Digital Civics.
Research group focus
Open Lab has been conducting impactful HCI research in local democracy, education, health and social care, and culture and heritage for over 18 years.
Open Lab pioneered Digital Civics—a novel research agenda in HCI that focuses on advancing methods and approaches to designing with communities and institutions. It develops digital innovations to enable civic participation and relational digital services. We harness this legacy to creatively tackle the biggest socio-technical challenges of our times.
We use a range of research methodologies responsive to contexts and place-based needs. These include Research through Design and Participatory Community-Engaged approaches to advance cross-disciplinary research that empower equity, wellbeing, and human rights in digital societies.
We take pride in co-creating, co-designing, deploying and evaluating digital innovations, platforms and interactive systems in real world contexts.
Our research endeavours focus on digital civics, human-AI interaction and HCI across the following themes:
- democracy, social justice, and public infrastructures
- design futures
- place-making, planetary and human flourishing
- health, care and wellbeing
- education and learning
Research impact
Civic empowerment and participatory design
Flagship programmes, such as EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre in Digital Civics (Digital Civics CDT) (2014-2025), have centred community empowerment in the design of digital technologies. The CDT's legacy includes 58 doctoral researchers trained in participatory, relational approaches to digital service design that challenges extractive models of technology development.
Democracy, justice & online harms
Our research programmes grapple with the political and ethical consequences of digital systems, positioning communities as critical voices on the governance and accountability of digital systems in public life. The EPSRC Next-Stage Digital Economy Centre for Digital Citizens (CDC) (2020-2026) investigated the influence of algorithmic technologies on democratic participation, health and lifelong learning.
The EPSRC agency
Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms project (2022-2025) addressed online harms, generating design principles that prioritise user agency and protection. The EPSRC Not-Equal+ on Social Justice through the Digital Economy (2018-2022) provided the infrastructure for cross-sectoral responses to the social justice implications of AI, catalysing collaboration across disciplines that rarely converge.
Energy transitions and climate justice
Our partnership on EPSRC Hydrogen Integration for Accelerated Energy Transitions (HI-ACT) project contributes dimensions of environmental and energy justice, advancing digital participation to one of the defining challenges of the century. By developing novel platforms for community engagement in energy transition planning, our work asserts that the shift to net-zero must be socially just and legitimate as well as technically viable.
Health and care
We host and participate in several programmes addressing unmet health and care needs of populations in the North-East of England and the UK more widely. The EPSRC Northern Health Futures (NortHFutures) hub operates at a regional level, targeting one of England's most deprived areas, thereby contributing to the national agenda on health equity and place-based care. The EPSRC Transforming the Objective Real-world measUrement of Symptoms (TORUS) programme grant investigates in-home sensing technologies for Parkinson's Disease, with the potential to reduce clinical burden while improving quality of life for patients and carers. The EPSRC Technology Empowered Dementia Independence (TEDI) Network+ aims to shape technologies that reflect people’s lived experiences, challenge inequalities, and build inclusive futures for dementia care.
Capacity building and interdisciplinary infrastructures
We have been building research capacity at the intersection of Computer Science, Social Science, Engineering, Arts and Humanities for several years. The EPSRC Digital Civics CDT, the EPSRC Not-Equal+ on Social Justice through the Digital Economy, and the EPSRC NortHFutures hub — have all been offering platforms for interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral knowledge exchange, generating long-lasting collaborative networks. These projects represent our sustained commitment to translational impact and to redefining what counts as rigorous, socially responsible research.
Education and Learning
We have developed sustained collaborations with iLab: Learn in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, contributing to Erasmus+ projects such as and These projects have employed innovative task-based digital learning pedagogies offering real-world, interactive learning experiences across diverse international communities. Our research has resulted in the development of platforms that empower communities to create and share high-quality interactive learning resources, contributing to more participatory and democratic models of knowledge production.
Key collaborators
We have established collaborations with local authorities (e.g. local and regional councils, combined authorities), public service providers (e.g. NHS Foundation Trusts), industrial partners in media and technology (e.g. Microsoft Research, BBC Research and Development), intergovernmental organisations (e.g. UNICEF Global Office of Evidence and Strategy Innocenti) and international humanitarian non-governmental organisations (e.g. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent), Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) partners (e.g. charities and NGOs).